


the long way round

by virtueoso



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: (and all that good stuff), F/M, Fix-It, Found Family, Future Fic, Light Angst, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2019-07-23 11:52:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 117,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16158443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virtueoso/pseuds/virtueoso
Summary: Retirement isn’t exactly turning out like Tessa expected. Six years after winning gold in Pyeongchang, she’s stuck in a thankless office job in Paris, watching dreams of her fashion empire fade into the distance. When she receives an email from Scott concerning a coaching opportunity with one of his teams in Montreal, she knows better than to go running. At least, she thinks she does.(a fix-it fic for the future)





	1. Chapter 1

Time is a funny thing.

"Just give it time," her mother used to say. "Give it time and things will sort themselves out."

She gave it time when she was thirteen, calling home in floods of tears about her strange new rink in Michigan, the stern-faced coaches and the older girls in the changing room who huddled in a corner, giggling behind their hands.

She gave it time when she was nineteen, bed-bound and wrapped in a thousand layers of stifling bandages, her phone silent on the table beside her. Her legs burned, her skin stretched shiny and pink under the black stitches, but that didn’t hurt nearly as much as waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for a call that never came.

She gave it time when she was twenty-nine - nearly three years of her life in the cycle of touring and studying and casual sex, wondering if it would be next week, or next month, or next year - until it became abundantly clear that there was no longer any point in giving her time away.

Nowadays, the occasions she has to remember her mother’s advice are few and far between. In fact, she's begun to think that there can be such a thing as _too_ much time.

The first six months after moving to Paris, she seemed to discover something new to fall in love with every day. The city was so full of life, crowded with people and light and sound, every corner hiding a new curiosity - but it was the simplest things that caught her by surprise. It was Monday morning, waking to the sound of rain pattering off the slated roof of her apartment. It was Thursday evening, spending three hours by herself in a tiny little art gallery, squinting at impenetrable French art accompanied by equally-impenetrable French caption cards. It was Saturday afternoon, out on the terrace in the midday sun with fresh pain au chocolat from the bakery down the street.

She loves Paris.

Sitting in a windowless room on the basement floor of the only affordable office within a mile of the city centre, Tessa is finding it harder and harder to remember that fact. The vibration of the 18:07 train rumbles through the building, setting the overhead lamps squeaking on their metal hinges. ‘Affordable’ in a city like Paris - even for Tessa, who has always been careful with her earnings - means an underground lair with an immediate proximity to the local Metro station.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Tessa loves her ideal of Paris.

It's still in her head, somewhere - the office of glass and chrome, the neat, rose-pink streaks of sunset painting the skyline outside her window, the ebony-framed designs spaced evenly on the office walls - but evidently something was lost in translation. For three years of paying her dues, Tessa has a barely-functioning fashion start-up strung together on dodgy underground cell reception, a client list she could count on both hands, and an unspecified number of sleepless nights that she certainly couldn't (and quite frankly, wouldn't want to).

"We've got an emergency, Tess. Hold onto your fucking horses."

Thank goodness she has Rose.

Usually implacable and unruffled, Tessa's partner in crime stands beside her desk with two cups of coffee trembling precariously in her grip. Her clipped English accent is broader than usual, the syllables running into each other in her haste to get them out.

"All I'm saying is you better not have any aspirations of a social life for the next week," Rose says. "Maybe the next month, actually. God, I had plans to visit my parents. We were going to stay in this lovely little villa along the coast of Cyprus and eat pastries for a week. I was going to eat so much you'd have to roll me back off the plane and pop me like that blueberry girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

Tessa raises her eyebrows.

"Firstly, let me take those from you before you cause an accident," she says, swiftly removing the cups from Rose's care. The coffee from the communal machine in the lobby upstairs may be vile, but she’d rather it stay safe in cardboard cups than all over their nice wood flooring. They're barely hanging onto the deposit as it is. "Now sit down. Take a breath. Tell me what's going on. I'm sure it's nothing that can't be sorted with a little creative rearrangement of the schedule."

Rose nods. "Right. Of course you’re right," she says, lowering herself into the empty chair next to Tessa's desk. Her now-empty hands pull at the end of her ponytail. "God, I'm sorry, I'm a mess. I don't mean to explode on you like this. Everything's been so hectic lately, what with the move and the supplier issue last month, and now this...so many bad things shouldn't happen to such good people as you and me. It's criminal. Can't the universe find some truly terrible excuse for a human being to heap all this stuff on instead? I wouldn't complain."

Tessa stifles a grin. She pushes one of the cups of coffee towards her friend, scooping up the other for herself. Her email inbox will just have to wait.

"Caffeine is a scientifically-proven coping mechanism, you know," she says.

Rose cocks an eyebrow. "Really? No, wait, I don't want to know. I do not need any more excuse to fuel my dependency." She takes a sip and immediately makes a face. "Ugh. God, every time I hit that button on the machine upstairs I think to myself, maybe this time will be the one time I get a latte that doesn't remind me of pond water. Tell me, Tess, am I just a glutton for punishment?"

"If we couldn't complain about the coffee, what other excuse would we have to spend all this time commiserating life?"

Rose tilts her head to the side, contemplating. A few more strands of ginger hair fall across her face, unravelling down to the collar of her leather jacket. Tessa never could convince Rose that the definition of 'business casual', however flexible, did not include her beloved biker jacket.

"Alright. Cheers to that," she says, tapping her coffee cup against Tessa's. She takes another sip, her nose wrinkling. "Nope. Nu-uh. Still not any better in the name of friendship."

Tessa gives a short laugh and sets her coffee down, strategically untouched. "Tell me about this new catastrophe, then. It can hardly be as bad as the coffee."

"I wish," Rose sighs, leaning back in her chair. "You remember that nice woman from The Butterfly Cabinet? The one I was due to have a meeting with this morning? Well, it turns out she's not so nice after all. They only want us to redo the _entire_ summer line! How long did it take us to come up with those - weeks? Months, almost? Apparently the designs don't meet - wait, I've got it here..."

She rummages in the satchel at her side and pulls out a leather-bound notebook. Her painted fingernails glint in the white lamplight as she rifles through the pages.

"Here we go," she says, landing on a page filled with indecipherable scrawls of handwriting - Rose may be a genius with a needle and thread, but her note-taking gives Tessa anxiety just to bear witness to. "Apparently our designs are not 'precisely as befits a luxury brand such as The Butterfly Cabinet' and 'require improvement'. Of course, they understand that this 'may cause inconvenience on the part of the design team' but feel 'these revisions are necessary to safeguard the excellent reputation that The Butterfly Cabinet has built across twenty years of operation' - oh get this, this is perfect - ' _particularly_ when dealing with a lesser established team'.“

Rose scoffs. She slams the notebook closed, tossing it onto Tessa's desk. "Bunch of condescending assholes. If they could get any further up their own asses, they'd never see the sun again."

"Would you like me to offer your feedback?" Tessa says, an eyebrow raised. The news is a heavy blow, it's true. They spent a full month at the drawing board to come up with the drafts for the project - but they've dealt with worse and come out on top. Pushing aside the sinking resignation that they won’t be making it home any time soon, there’s no reason to panic.  

“Go ahead,” Rose snorts. “I’d like to see their faces.”

“I’d also _kind_ of like to keep this client…”

“I know, I know,” Rose waves a hand. “I do too, you know I do. I just rely on you to remind me sometimes. The big picture has a habit of passing me by.”

“Maybe I should come to the next meeting,” Tessa says, placing a hand on her coffee cup to steady it against the vibration of the building as another train rumbles past. “Just in case.”

Rose grins. “Reinforcements. Excellent.”

“Reinforcements? Are we in fashion design or fighting World War Three?”

“Great question, Tessa. As it happens, that’s a very debatable subject…”

Sometimes Tessa thinks she would have packed the whole thing in within a year if it wasn't for her partner. Rose has a certain charm to her that makes the long hours, sleepless nights and clients from hell seem a little less soul-destroying. Perhaps it's simply that life is less terrifying when there's someone there to go through thick and thin with you. She'd come to miss that.

“Okay. Moving on to more productive matters...” Tessa says, shaking her head as she turns to her laptop. “Where can we set aside time this week to go over the designs? Mathias should be able to whip up some samples at short notice, he still owes us for his daughter's wedding dress...I was going to run down to the fabric shop this weekend to ask about the new swatches, but I could push that to next month," she muses, pulling up her and Rose's shared calendar. "Then if you don't mind working late on a Saturday, we could get the basics sketched out tomorrow. We've got a couple of client meetings during the week. Nothing major. Let's see about shuffling the bulk of them as late as possible...I need to email everyone anyway to remind them we're on Rue de Sofia now. We don't need any more confused phone calls from the old office."

There's a snort of laughter from Rose's direction. Tessa glances up, momentarily bewildered. "What? Did I forget something?"

"Nope. It's just good to be reminded every now and again that I'm working with a superwoman. Somehow I still manage to overlook that tiny little detail."

Tessa smiles gently, shrugging. "If twenty years of being a professional athlete was good for anything, it's scheduling."

"Wish my parents had told me that before I quit swimming."

The office lapses into quiet as Tessa fires off emails in rapid succession, fingers flying across the keyboard. Fortunately (at least with regards to re-scheduling) they don't have too many clients arranged for the following week; it's a quick fifteen minutes to send out the required emails. Rose leans forward in her chair, craning her neck to study the row of ornaments arranged beside Tessa's laptop. The leather seat creaks quietly underneath her - if they couldn't have a luxury location, Tessa had mandated that they were at least going to shell out for luxury chairs.

"Hey, I like this one," Rose says, tapping one of the ornaments. "Is it new?"

Rose's hand hovers over a small wood and metal sculpture. Two mountains of silver, built from an intricate pattern of interlocking symbols, are set into a wooden frame, once-varnished but worn with age and chipped in the top left corner. Tessa recognises it instantly. The strange collection of jumbled pieces is unmistakable for anything else.

"Oh, that? It's from our last Olympics in South Korea. I found it at the bottom of a suitcase this morning. I think it's supposed to be the mountains of Pyeongchang, but don't quote me on that - it's been a while."

Rose shakes her head. "The most I find at the bottom of my suitcases is lint and a disappointing amount of foreign currency. Next time you find a medal kicking around your coat pockets, feel free to send it my way. I promise I won't melt it down for the emergency coffee fund."

"Sorry," Tessa smiles. "Those are safe at home in my kitchen drawer."

Rose pushes herself up from her chair. "Well, one day. A few more months with this pond swill and I might catch you in a moment of desperation. Now, if I agree to work on pleasing our corporate overlords, would you please answer the damn email that's been flashing at the corner of your screen for the last ten minutes?"

"Because you asked so nicely," Tessa says. "Don't forget your coffee!"

"If only I could, Tess," Rose sighs, swiping her cup from the desk before heading over to her own desk across the room.

Tessa smiles as she turns back to her laptop. Rose was right - there's a notification flashing insistently in the bottom right corner of the screen. If she's lucky, it'll be a client agreeing to the change of meeting time. If she's not, there may be some difficult phone conversations to be had. She taps to pull it up, settling back into her chair - and then the smile freezes on her face. It's as though all the breath leaves her at once.

Above the itemised list of shipping notifications, appointments, and promotional emails sits a name she hasn't come across in years.

She casts a quick glance over to Rose. Her partner is safely engrossed in her own work, legs stretched out under the desk as she sketches. When Tessa looks back to the laptop, it's still there, blinking merrily at her, completely unaware of its own absurdity - new message received from Scott Moir.

What business does Scott have to be emailing her? There's the _slimmest_ of chances she forgot to RSVP to some commemorative Olympic celebration, but she's been turning those down for a good few years now. How did he even remember her personal email address? Didn't he burn it in a fire? The last words they exchanged were hardly civil; she's still not convinced that he hasn't got her on auto-spam.

In her head, she counts back the days. His mother's birthday was in May - she _definitely_ sent a card. She would never forget Alma, regardless of her disastrous relationship with her son. Marie-France and Patrice's anniversary isn't for another few months. The competitive season in Canada will have barely even begun. There's no reason she can think of for Scott's name to be flashing up in her inbox (with an unhelpful lack of information in the email subject) aside from the worst-case scenarios: illness, death, and marriage. Possibly in that order.

Her hands tremble as she taps through to the email.

\------------

 _FROM: scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_ _  
_ _TO: tessavirtue89@gmail.com_

_Dear Tessa,_

_Or is it Dr. Virtue now? I can never keep track, but hey, if I make some fatal error in the first line of this email, I guess that’s pretty par for the course. Before you panic, everyone’s healthy. Mum’s still alive and kicking. Although if you fancy emailing her once in a blue moon, I think maybe she’d get off my back about getting you to visit._

_Anyway, long story short, I’m coaching this new team. Well, not new, I’ve been coaching them for a few years now – Natalie and Gabriel, maybe you remember? But maybe not; I don’t think they joined until after you left. They’re good kids though, you’d like them. Headstrong, too talented for their own good, a proper partnership. They’ve got a real shot for 2026 – Skate Canada think so too, and Marie and Patch (who send their well-wishes). Marie also asked me to pass on the message that Billie-Rose is looking for a graduation dress but she didn’t want to presume…except she still asked me to pass on the message, so take that as you like._

_We’ve been working with a couple of new choreographers for the pre-Olympic season, trying out a bunch of things to change up the narrative. To be honest, none of it is turning out the way we’ve envisioned. I was talking with some of the coaches the other day, and one of them suggested that maybe we’d be able to convince you to come and give it a try? No strings attached. If it all goes horribly – well, nothing lost, nothing gained. Marie’s ready to take the reins if need be, but the kids are really keen to do something a bit different this season. I can’t think of anything better than having one of their heroes come and choreograph for them._

_I know none of this sounds very convincing but if you’ve read this far then I must be doing something right._

_Attached is a video which will hopefully help - and if you don’t switch off your screen immediately, you’ll be doing better than Patch._

_Best wishes,_

_Scott_

_\------------_

Tessa doesn't know quite what she was anticipating.

A Pandora's box of horrors flooding out into the world wouldn't have been an unreasonable expectation. There's a complete, weighty sense of confusion resting upon her; if her eyebrows become permanently stuck in the furrowed position they've adopted, she's going to have words.

Scott's aforementioned video is a small file attached to the email - perhaps it will shed some light. At the very least, she couldn't possibly be any more perplexed than she is currently. She sighs, resting her chin on one hand as she attaches her headphones to the laptop and presses play.

On screen, two small figures pop into view – a girl and a boy. Tessa recognises them immediately: Natalie Levesque and Gabriel Adler, the current poster children of Skate Canada’s Olympic promotional campaign. Natalie is tall, well-built; a tangle of dark brown hair clipped back behind her shoulders, and bright blue eyes that hold Tessa’s gaze even through the computer screen. Her partner, Gabriel, is barely taller than she is, with a mop of sandy blonde hair and a shy smile. He hangs back a couple of inches behind Natalie, his hands tucked behind him.

The arena around them is painfully familiar. The Canadian flag still hangs in pride of place on the wall, if a little tattered at the edges. If they swung the camera over to the left, she’d be able to read her name on the placard above the door: Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, 2018 Olympic Ice Dance Champions. Of course, Gabriella and Guillaume's would have joined theirs now for Beijing. As for 2026 and the upcoming Calgary Olympics, it seems all Canada’s hopes are pinned on the two youngsters currently standing at centre ice. If the pair are aware of the soul-crushing pressure heaped on their shoulders (and they _must_ be, Tessa remembers that feeling so well, the tension that wrings the breath from you like water from a dishcloth) - they don’t seem to show it.

On screen, Natalie claps her hands together. “Good afternoon, Tessa. I’m Natalie, and this is Gabriel,” she says, gesturing to herself and her partner in turn. “This video is to persuade you that you should come and choreograph for us, because we’re already assuming that Scott did a shit job of it.”

“Hey!” warns a familiar voice, floating through from off-screen. “Don’t think that you’re exempt from push-ups just because I’m behind the camera.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Natalie says, smiling sweetly – and oh, Tessa can already tell that this is another girl who has learned how to wrap Scott around her little finger. He’s far too easy a read sometimes. “Ready?” she says, turning to her partner.

Gabriel gives a short nod. “This season’s rhythm dance is the Golden Waltz,” he says, so quietly that Tessa has to boost her volume to the maximum to make out what he’s saying. “I hope you like it.”

There’s a click, and music begins to play through the arena. The three-beat waltz count is soft and lilting, familiar. Tessa finds herself counting out the measures of music before she even realises what she’s doing. The figures on screen push off across the ice, stepping through the waltz pattern.

They’re good – excellent, even. Their steps are neat and precise, timed well with one another. There’s no push and pull in their movements; they flow from one point to the next, always in tune. Gabriel’s command on the ice is completely different to the shy, soft-spoken boy who introduced himself on camera. He leads Natalie with confidence and she responds in kind, her exuberance translating to a natural charisma as she dances.

Tessa can’t take her eyes off them. Of course, she also can’t help picking out technical pointers as they skate their circuits of the ice - their posture is sloppy on the change of hold, she’s sure Scott has them working on it already - but it’s the last few seconds of the recording that linger with her.

As the music fades, the pair relax out of their final positions. Natalie’s hand slips down to pat Gabriel on the side, and Gabriel’s look of command melts into a wry smile as he meets his partner’s eyes - a job well done, a moment of satisfaction that comes from investing every fibre of your being into a shared purpose. Tessa remembers it well - how it binds you closer than anything else, that little red ribbon of fate, and how it can unravel just as easily.

The video cuts off. Tessa swallows hard around the lump in her throat, the sudden, melancholy surge of nostalgia.

She plays the video back three times over as she figures out how to word her reply. Always, she hesitates on that final freeze frame; the two of them, sharing a private moment.

\------------

 _FROM: tessavirtue89@gmail.com_ _  
_ _TO: scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_

_Dear Scott,_

_Just ‘Tessa’ is fine. It’s a Masters degree, and it was two years ago._

_I’m sorry to make your mum worry – please tell her I’m fine, but work keeps me busy. I barely have time to visit my own family._

_It’s obvious that Natalie and Gabriel are excellent skaters. I’ve heard nothing but glowing reviews of their talent, and from the video you attached, it’s clear that they have an abundance of potential and performance ability. They’re truly a promising couple, and I know that with a coach such as you they have every chance of going to the very top._

_As for your offer…I appreciate the leap you took in emailing me, I really do, but work is far too hectic for me to consider taking time out to visit Montreal. Truthfully, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with choreography. I’ve barely set foot on the ice since coming to Paris three years ago, let alone kept up with the technical handbook. Marie-France provides excellent choreography – much better than anything I could come up with, I can promise you that. I’m afraid you would only end up disappointed, and your team off the podium._

_I do want to thank you for your email; it’s been far too long. Next time you’re in France for competition, let me know and we’ll see if something can be arranged._

_Kind regards,_

_Tessa_

_\------------_

Chugging back coffee – cold now, foul-tasting stuff – she crosses her arms and waits. Sure enough, after a few minutes there’s a _ping_ and a new message flashes up on her desktop.

\------------

 _FROM: scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_ _  
_ _TO: tessavirtue89@gmail.com_

_Tessa,_

_Belated congrats on the graduation! I always knew you would fly through that stuff. Sorry I can’t congratulate you in person, but hey. Life._

_Respectfully, I think you’re underselling yourself. Talents like yours don’t disappear just because you step away for a few years. Marie’s a genius, of course, but our programs were always a team effort. The two of you could pull things out of the music that I never knew existed in the first place. Would we ever have had Moulin Rouge without you? I don’t think so._

_I know I’m asking a lot, but the whole team is ready to support you with whatever you need. You wouldn’t even have to commit to anything – just come visit for a weekend and see how it goes. Meet Nat and Gabe (maybe drop in on Marie and Patch as well or I’d never hear the end of it). We’ll get you on the ice with the kids and see what comes of it. I can be there to sort out the technical end of things – or Patch, if you’d prefer. You could come any time in the next month, there’s no rush. We’ll make things as easy as we possibly can for you._

_Maybe we’d get nothing, but I think it could be really special. You don’t do boring, Tess._

_Scott_

_\------------_

It’s a strange comfort to know that the Scott who remains is still as much of a sap as the one she left. Tessa rolls her eyes, but there’s a smile pulling at the corners of her lips as she fires off a reply.

\------------

 _FROM: tessavirtue89@gmail.com_ _  
_ _TO: scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_

_Scott,_

_I don’t know if you fully appreciate what you’re offering to take on board here. I couldn’t possibly promise repeat visits to check up on progress or make sure things aren’t veering wildly off choreographic course. I can’t be there for competitions or training. I can’t even promise to be in the same country 95% of the time. That’s BESIDE the fact that I’ve never choreographed for anyone except myself. There’s zero guarantee that anything I come up with will be fit for someone else’s skating._

_Why would you possibly want that over a safe bet?_

_Tessa_

_\------------_

This time Tessa doesn’t wait for the notification – she’s refreshing her email inbox with a fervour limited only by the cramp in her hand from gripping the mouse so tightly. Thankfully for her tendons, Scott’s reply comes even quicker than the last one.

_\------------_

_FROM: scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_ _  
_ _TO: tessavirtue89@gmail.com_

_Tess,_

_Let me put on my coach hat for a minute. I know I don’t need to explain to you that there’s no better time to go with something experimental than a pre-Olympic season. We need to get away from the same old music and movement, bring some fresh blood into the rink. This way, the kids get new choreography from someone the whole team trusts, and we get to make something that could be a complete mess, or it could be ground-breaking. All or nothing, just like always._

_Scott_

_PS. Selfishly, I kinda miss having a sympathetic ear for my jokes. No one here is nearly appreciative enough of my comedic genius._

_\------------_

There must be something fundamentally wrong with her. There are so many reasons why taking a weekend out to visit Scott and his team would be the worst idea she’s had in a long, long lifetime of bad ideas. Five metres from where she’s currently contemplating flitting off to Montreal for a weekend, Rose is beavering away on a complete rehaul of their designs. Waiting in her inbox are no less than seven independent obligations that should keep her in Paris – all of which is _beside_ the minor fact that she hasn’t spoken to Scott in person for over three years now.

He could be an entirely different person. For all she knows, he’s gone bald and grown a handlebar moustache (but that’s not entirely true, she’s seen recent enough pictures on Facebook to know that he still has a healthy head of hair). She knows little about him anymore except how he used to be. There’s something terrifying in that uncertainty – but something curious, too. What _is_ he like? How have the years changed him? Has he changed at all?

It’s too difficult for her to imagine the possibilities. She doesn’t expect that he’d still look at her the way he used to; but, then, what would it be? Polite friendship? Detachment? Thinly-veiled hostility? Tessa’s not sure which would be worse.  

It would only be a weekend. Two days to put all her questions to rest – and then she can return to Paris, settled in her knowledge that whatever Scott and his team are doing in Montreal, it’s firmly behind her and her new life. And after all, a quick visit seems like the least she can do when his students went to all the trouble of filming a video.

Throwing the last of her coffee back, she types up her reply.

\------------

 _FROM: tessavirtue89@gmail.com_ _  
_ _TO: scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_

_Scott,_

_If – IF – I can clear space in the schedule (and that’s a BIG ‘if’), I might be able to take a look. All my air miles have been sitting unloved in my account for far too long anyway. Give me 24 hours and I’ll see what I can do._

_T._

_PS. I’m expecting entirely new material for your stand-up routine. Don’t disappoint me._

\------------

It’s hardly her signature on a written contract. None of this seals her life away for years or ties her down to a person or a place. Short of outright refusing, her response couldn’t be _less_ of a commitment. But her outstretched hand hovers over the screen for what feels like an eternity before she finally grits her teeth and taps the send button.  

She watches the email pass through her outbox, into sent – and then it’s done. Her gaze drifts idly across her desk and lands on the small ornament Rose picked up earlier, the wooden sculpture from Pyeongchang. Has it really only been six years since then? It feels like a lifetime.

As a rule of thumb, Tessa doesn’t mix career number two with career number one. Her medals are safely stowed in a kitchen drawer in her house back in London. Gifts from fans and competition alike are piled high in a storage unit across the sea. A therapist once told her that only by looking backwards can we appreciate how far we’ve come, but privately Tessa thinks that the only people who look to the past are those who have nothing to gain from the future – and she’s steadfastly determined to make something of hers.

Just occasionally, though, her spectrums of time collide at precisely the same moment; the very same day she plucks a little wooden memento from the bottom of a suitcase at the back of her cupboard, the largest ghost from her past turns up with an offer she can’t refuse.

There’s another _ping_ from her laptop.

Scott’s reply this time is short and sweet.

\------------

 _FROM: scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_ _  
_ _TO: tessavirtue89@gmail.com_

_Deal._

_\------------_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some people spend their summer break on holiday. I spent mine writing 150 pages of RPF. Currently very content with my life decisions. I'm aiming for weekly updates (most likely on Mondays) but life may get in the way occasionally. A huge thank you (as always) to my wonderful beta runnyc33, without whom this fic would never have made it past infancy. I can be found over @virtueoso on Tumblr if you fancy yelling at me, making polite conversation, ranting about Tessa's piercings or anything in between. Otherwise, thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed, and see you next week!


	2. Chapter 2

And so it is that a few short weeks later, Tessa finds herself back in the hallways of Gadbois, suitcase in hand and a yawning pit of anxiety in her stomach.  Everything is precisely as she remembers: pristine brick walls, glossy varnished floors, all clinically well-maintained. Only the posters hanging from the walls are different, advertising discounted gym memberships and ice time - that, and she has a nasty suspicion that her reserved parking spot has been stolen by this point. If she thinks too hard about what she’s about to do, the anxiety monster buzzing at the back of her brain starts to swallow everything in its path. She had plenty of time to contend with it on the eight-hour flight from Paris. At least now her phone is stowed safely in the bottom of her bag, where she can try not to fixate on the cheery ‘get well soon’ messages Rose sent her minutes before boarding her flight. Her partner currently operates under the assumption that Tessa has come down with an incredibly contagious case of the flu, and must remain under quarantine for the next 48 hours.

Rose will understand. Or at least, Tessa hopes she will.

Through the red double doors she can hear the faint sounds of a practice session in progress: the scraping of blades against ice, voices in conversation, familiar but too faint to recognise any owners. She looks down at her watch for the fourth time – eight a.m. on the dot. As arranged. All that remains is for her to open the doors and step into whatever fresh pit of hell she’s dug for herself.

At any rate, if she waits here much longer she’s liable to be thrown out by security.

Tugging her jacket into proper position and re-situating her grip on her suitcase handle, the plastic slippery with sweat, she pushes open the doors.

It’s the smell of the place that hits her first. Not in a bad way, but with the rush of nostalgia that comes with the smell of a favourite childhood dinner or a grandmother’s perfume: immediately comforting, enveloping her in a sense of welcome. Gadbois is an exact mixture – the sharp snap of cold, the cool mint of the air fresheners hung by the boards around the rink, and always, Patrice’s honey-roast peanuts. Tessa can’t count the number of packets she watched him demolish during her two years under his tutelage. He popped them into his mouth like candies. Without fail, at every instance where the music swelled, ready for her to drop into Scott’s arms with a passionate sigh – cutting across the rink would be the _crunch_ of a nut between Patrice’s teeth.  

There’s only silence now, as everyone on the ice stops and stares; an entire rinkful of skaters and coaches, too many pairs of eyes to count, all fixed on her.

“Tessa!” she hears, echoing off the metal beams of the roof. “You’re here!”

A dark-haired girl at centre ice beams at her, waving a hand enthusiastically. Tessa recognises that winning smile; this must be Natalie. Next to her, a disgruntled-looking blonde boy rolls his eyes. “Nat, we’re in the middle of a move, you can’t just _stop_.”

“Are you saying we should _ignore_ the fact that Tessa Virtue just walked into the rink? Do you want me to stand here and do nothing?”

“It’s okay, Nat,” comes a third voice, older, instantly familiar. “I’m sure Tessa will forgive you for ruining her hopes of sneaking in under our noses.”

Tessa knew this moment was coming. She had played it over and over in her head, imagined every eventuality – but the phantom presence in her imagination was distant and untouchable. The real thing is impossibly familiar. She knows every cadence that voice can take; scratchy and hoarse at five in the morning, tense and tight with nerves during competition, low and quiet at her ear. There’s no extreme she hasn’t covered. Bleak, blank resignation - that one was the worst of all.  

“You got me,” she shrugs. With a half-hearted smile, she drags her gaze over to the owner of the voice. “Hello, Scott.”

He’s standing behind the boards, around the corner from the doors – almost like a safety precaution, Tessa thinks – but she can see him well enough. His hair has grown longer; it curls at the nape of his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his puffer jacket. His forearms rest atop the boards, more muscular than she remembers, and there are more lines to his face, but his eyes are the same: deep set, a rich, soulful hazel. Scott had old eyes when he was thirteen, owlish and brown, eyes that made her feel strong and secure just to look into them. Now she sees the youth in them.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says, his voice lilting and soft. The lines around his eyes scrunch into a smile – so many lines, so many years of laughter – and she feels her composure slipping a fraction. “You travel okay?”

“Not quite up to the days of Air Canada sponsored business class, but well enough, thank you.”

Is it odd to be talking to him like it’s only been a week since they last saw each other, and not three whole years? It barely feels like time has passed at all. They may as well be seventeen and nineteen - except she thinks that even at that precarious stage they were more sure of each other than they are right now. She sees his eyes flicker across her, taking stock; she knows that he’s doing exactly the same as she is – scrutinising her against the image of what he remembers, working out where there’s a mismatch.

The pair on the ice shuffle on their skates. The scratching of their blades snaps Tessa back to the awareness that she didn’t come here simply to stare at her ex-partner for an inappropriately long amount of time. She does, thankfully, have a job to do.

Tessa dips her head, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Don’t let me distract you from practice,” she says. “I’ll sit in the stands and watch for a little while, if that’s okay. It’ll be helpful to get an idea of how you all work together before I dive into anything.”

“No problem,” Scott says. “Take your time. We’re just about to run through the pattern for the rhythm dance.”

Tessa nods, and tugs her suitcase over to the stands. Music begins to play – the same music from the video Scott sent her – and Natalie and Gabriel set to work like little clockwork figurines. She settles herself on a wooden bench halfway up the stands and watches as they practice; with music, without, Scott interrupting every so often to demonstrate a certain movement. The rink is busy with clusters of skaters in colourful assortments of practice gear. Tessa recognises a few, but most of them are strangers. She doesn’t know why that’s surprising to her - it’s been nearly two Olympic cycles since Pyeongchang. Plenty of time for things to change.

By the number of curious glances fielded in her direction, however, it seems near-enough the entire rink recognises her. A young-looking pair almost topple over each other in their distraction, and are handily scolded by their coach. In a more comfortable environment, Tessa might find it a compliment. Here, she can’t help but feel like the newest attraction in a zoo. At least Scott’s attention never wavers from his students - it makes it slightly easier to relax, and focus on what she’s come here to do. Barely two weeks have passed since their email exchange, but the improvement in Natalie and Gabriel’s skating is evident. Their turns are sharper, their posture neater, smiles coming easier and more assured.

There was never any doubt in her mind that Scott would be a world-class coach.

As Natalie and Gabriel lean for a final time into their ending position, Scott claps his hands together at the boards. “Great job, guys,” he calls. “Really great, there’s a lot there to be proud of.”

The pair head across to join their coach, faces flushed with exertion. Gabriel’s mouth twists downwards. “Sorry, Nat,” he says, shoving his hands into his tracksuit pockets. “I muscled the counter that time and the whole thing almost slipped out from underneath me, I could feel it.”

Natalie shakes her head, smiling faintly but silent – pausing for breath.

“Don’t sweat it,” Scott tells them, clapping a hand across Gabriel’s shoulder. “We’re early days yet. The ease will come with practice. That third key point, though – the little twist you did with your hand?” – Scott demonstrates, grinning – “Ugh, wonderful. You’re both finding the tipping point between softness and power, I can see you really listening to the nuances of the music. Good stuff.” He casts a glance up to Tessa. “Any expert advice up there, boss?”

“Oh!” Natalie exclaims, spinning around to face the stands, her exhaustion forgotten. Her eyes light up as she spots Tessa. “You and Scott _have_ to demonstrate for us. Your Waltz was unbelievable! And I bet it’s not something you forget easily, either – those key points haunt my nightmares.”

Scott stiffens, turning away. Tessa can’t see the look in his eyes – she doesn’t know if she wants to.

“Oh, uh – I don’t know about that,” Tessa says, attempting a stilted laugh. “You’re very kind, but it’s a been a long time…I wouldn’t want to ruin all your fond memories.” She laughs again, trying to inject some kind of genuine emotion into the sound.

Natalie tilts her head to the side, unperturbed. “Scott’s _always_ talking about how difficult the compulsories were compared to what we have now. You don’t have to be nervous, I promise Gabriel is a lot nicer than he looks.”

“I’m really more comfortable where I am,” Tessa says, hesitating.

“Please, Tessa? I-“

“Natalie,” Scott says, and his voice is like iron. “Drop it.”

For once, she’s glad that his back is still turned to her.

Natalie’s face falls; her expression hardens from hurt into indifference in quick succession. Gabriel pulls hesitantly at her arm. “Come on, Nat. Chill out. Let’s go cool down, give Scott and Tessa a minute to catch up. I’m sure they could use it.”

No, Tessa wants to tell her hopelessly misguided new charges. No, Scott and Tessa absolutely do not need a minute to catch up; they need every minute from now until she steps back on the plane to be so busy that they scarcely have time to breathe in each other’s direction. But Natalie and Gabriel disappear in the direction of the changing rooms, and Scott is meandering his way across to her, and wasn’t the whole point of this trip to satisfy her curiosity once and for all, despite the fact that her mind tumbles over and over itself like a hamster on a wheel?

The wood creaks as Scott comes to sit on the bench next to her, a carefully measured three feet of space between them. He runs a hand through his hair, glances across to her, before fixing his gaze solidly on the remaining figures on the ice. The knot of anxiety in Tessa’s stomach is burning a hole right through her, she’s sure.

“Marie and Patch send their love,” Scott says. “They’re both out of town for training camps, or they’d be hauling ass to come and say hello.”

“You’ve got the run of the rink, then?”

“Yup. Home alone without the folks,” Scott grins. “I’m just trying not to burn it all down before they get back.”

Tessa watches Scott’s hands move to the edge of the bench, gripping tight – then fold back into his lap. Restless as ever.

“I, um - I don’t want to make things difficult with Natalie and Gabriel,” she says. “I’m sorry you had to step in.”

“What, you mean the little thing with Nat?” Scott bats a hand against the air. “Nah, it’s no biggie. She’s always like that – down one minute, up the next. Give her some space and she’ll come back like it never happened in the first place. Nat’s a simple one to deal with.”

Tessa raises her eyebrows. “I take it Gabriel isn’t?”

“He’s not _difficult_ , y’know, he’s just…”

“Hard to read?”

Scott raises his head to meet her gaze. His expression is startlingly direct; there could be three feet of space between them or three inches, it wouldn’t make a difference.

“Yeah. Exactly,” he says, the corners of his mouth inching up into a tentative smile - she’d never got this far in imagining how today might pan out, they’re going hopelessly off book - and she lets the moment linger between them.

Scott was always good at making people feel special; he claimed a hatred of ‘schmoozing’, as he used to call it, but Tessa would leave him for all of ten minutes at a sponsored event and return to find the entire room eating out of the palm of his hand. He had a knack for connecting with people. Tessa learned her way through relationship-building; to Scott, it was second nature. It follows, then, that she should probably be used to Scott’s unique ability to make whoever he’s talking to feel like the centre of his universe for that singular moment in time.

It’s really nothing to do with her. Except she imagines that most people Scott talks to haven’t known him since he was barely out of Velcro-strap trainers. Most people that Scott talks to probably don’t know the way he snores when he sleeps, in tiny, soft whistles of breath. Most people probably don’t know that, embedded under the skin between Scott’s right thumb and forefinger, there’s a tiny grey dot of graphite from where Danny stabbed him with a pencil (with intent to kill, as Scott retells it), and that he’d paraded it around as evidence of bubonic plague until Alma threatened him with cough syrup.

The things she knows about him don’t count for anything at all - the little, insignificant details of another person’s life - but still.

She knows them.  
  


* * *

  
Perhaps most surprisingly of all, the day passes exactly as Tessa plans.

Under normal circumstances, she would attribute it to a case of divine luck, but in this situation it’s more likely to do with Scott’s commitment to accommodating her every whim. He doesn’t say much to her after their initial conversation in the rink – perhaps he senses that she needs time to herself, or perhaps he’s deep in thought too. He’s always there: at the boards in the rink, in the gym, in the off-ice sessions. He’s simply quiet.

Halfway through the afternoon, they accompany Natalie and Gabriel to their weekly ballroom session. They’re saddled with the most rundown of the three dance studios at Gadbois, which seems to have changed little since Tessa’s time, save for the fact that paint peels in all four corners now rather than just one. Scott comes to join her on the rickety plastic chairs by the door, and they collectively try to look un-intimidating (from the funny shade of grey that the ballroom coach turns when she catches sight of the two of them, Tessa doesn’t think they’re very successful).

Tessa would be lying if she said that a large part of her day wasn’t spent sneaking surreptitious glances in Scott’s direction, but more and more, she finds herself genuinely engaging with the pair of skaters she’s been charged with. Her first impression of Natalie and Gabriel was perhaps a little unfair. She’s seen teams with their dynamic a hundred times before; the loud, brash partner overshadowing their quieter companion. For a good five or six years, she would have slotted Scott and herself into that same category. Natalie is effusive, a bundle of fast-talking energy bouncing from one thought to another with barely a pause for breath – but there’s a change in the way she speaks when she talks to Gabriel. The pair never talk over one another. Whatever topic of conversation Natalie is currently barrelling down, she stops as soon as Gabriel begins to speak. They’re fascinating to watch; Tessa was a psychology student once, after all, and she finds herself increasingly transfixed. So transfixed, in fact, that it takes her a solid minute to realise that everyone has turned to stare at her and the ringtone currently blaring from the depths of her bag.

“I’m so sorry,” she mumbles, getting to her feet. “I’ll take this outside, won’t be a moment. Probably just a business call.”

The ringtone continues, insistent, as she slips out of the practice room and a few feet down the hallway – far enough that she won’t be overheard by anyone inside.

“Hello?” she says cautiously, as she raises the phone to her ear.

“Oh, thank god you’re not dead!” Rose’s voice floods through the speaker, so loudly that Tessa takes a few more steps away from the practice room. “I was so _worried._ First you say you’re taking a sick day for the first time in _ever_ , then you don’t return my messages – honestly, Tess, I was this close to marching over to your flat, quarantine zone or no. Are you okay? Is it bad? Do you need me to bring anything after work? Soup? Ice cream? Trashy romcoms? I’ve got it all covered, you name it.”

The genuine worry in her friend’s voice does nothing for Tessa’s guilty conscience. She’s going to have to cover at least a month of Rose’s paperwork when she gets back - and even then, she doubts that’ll do much for her own personal atonement. Maybe she should consider going to confession.

“I appreciate your concern, Rose, but I’m fine. Really. I took a nap and lost track of time, that’s all,” she says. “It’s nothing but a stomach bug. I must have picked it up from that café on Wednesday. A few days of bedrest and I’ll be good as new, I promise.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come over? I’m only round the corner, you know.”

“Very. We can’t have you getting sick as well.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Rose sighs. “It’s no fun being in the office alone. I can talk to myself when you’re there and I sound vaguely functional. Without you, I’m just a sad old woman rambling alone in a basement. It’s not nearly as glamorous.”

Tessa smiles. “I’ll be back before you know it, I-”

Distantly, footsteps echo along the hallway. Tessa covers her microphone quickly with one hand, waiting until the figure crosses past the end of the corridor. The sound is unlikely to carry far, but she really should wrap this conversation up before anyone decides to come looking for her.

“Listen," she says. "I have to go, okay – lunch in the microwave.”

There’s a sudden pause on the end of the line. Too late, Tessa realises her mistake.

“Lunch?” Rose says. “It’s ten o’clock in the evening, Tess. Are you…sure you’re doing okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine, of course - I meant dinner. Between this messed up sleep schedule and the stomach bug, I barely know whether it’s day or night, I swear.”

What was the art to lying? As simple as possible? Tessa never learned very well, in any case.

“Sure…” Rose replies, in a tone of voice that makes Tessa’s heart sink. “I’ll call again tomorrow to make sure you haven’t passed out on your kitchen floor trying to make yourself a bowl of cereal at two in the morning.”

“If that sets your mind at rest, go ahead, but I promise I’ll be fine. There’s really nothing to worry about. I’m going to eat dinner and head straight to bed. Totally boring.”

Rose sighs. “Go on then, Patient Zero. Get your food before it goes cold and you forget to eat entirely.”

“Bye, Rose,” Tessa smiles. “Thanks for calling. I’ll see you soon.”

“Uh-huh.”

The phone line goes silent.

Tessa slowly lowers the phone from her ear. She hates lying - and lying to people she cares about even more - but how would she even go about explaining the situation? Rose knows nothing of her history with Scott save that they won a few Olympic titles together. Tessa has been very careful to mention as little of everything _else_ that went on as she possibly can. That’s a whole can of worms that she opens only in the most necessary of situations. She could put herself through the emotional wringer of detailing her entire romantic history (inevitably, Rose would not be content with anything less than a retelling of every day of her twenty-three years with Scott). Or, she could sidestep the issue entirely. All she’s doing is taking a weekend to travel back down a path not taken. It seems pointless to invest all that heartache for two days.

Still, the lump of guilt that settles in her stomach doesn’t care that her lie is technically for a noble cause. She turns her phone over and over in her hands as she heads back into the dance studio. Natalie and Gabriel are engrossed in their coaching, waltz music flooding from the speakers at the front of the room - only Scott looks up.  

“That the new business partner?” he whispers.

“Rose,” Tessa corrects, as she settles back into her seat beside him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him mouth the name to himself, like he’s testing it out. There’s a tiny thrill of vindication in the way he lapses into silence - an ugly sense of pride that comes with knowing that Scott is jealous of this person he’s never met. See, Tessa thinks. I have people too.

Scott waits until the music swells to the point at which their voices are lost beneath it. “What did she want?”

“To know if I was feeling okay.”

He glances quickly at her, his brow furrowing. “Are you-”

“She doesn’t know I’m here,” she explains. “As far as Rose knows, I’m sick in bed in Paris.”

Scott raises his eyebrows.

“If you’re about to lecture me, please don’t,” she whispers, before he can speak. “I’m aware it’s a terrible thing to do to a friend.”

“I was actually going to say that you’re becoming rebellious in your old age,” he says, with a small shrug.

Finally, she can put her finger on it - the thing that’s been nagging at her ever since she arrived.

She can’t read him like she used to be able to. Gone is the open book of years past. Back in the rink, both of them tentative and eager with nerves, he was different - more open, like she remembered him. Now, all of that familiarity slides away behind a carefully neutral expression, his eyes cool and cold - practiced. When he turns to look at her - and it’s infrequent enough that she takes note of it - there could be a hundred different emotions sitting just out of her reach.

In a strange way, it doesn’t even worry her.

It’s a challenge.  
  


* * *

  
Sunday morning finds them up bright and early in the dance studio again - only this time, they're in the bigger studio with the marginally-improved view over the parking lot, paint that actually sticks to the walls like it's supposed to, and a smell that doesn't remind Tessa of a damp pile of leaves. She doesn't know what kind of favours Scott had to promise to secure them this room, and she's not about to ask. It might, however, explain why he's being so prickly about her plan for the morning.

"You sure about this, Tess? I mean, we only have a day. Seems kind of waste to spend it in here. Wouldn't it be better to get them on the ice?"

Tessa places her hands firmly on her hips. "You asked for my help. I'm giving it. So sit down and let me do what I came here for."

Scott opens his mouth - then obviously thinks better of it, and closes it again. He leans back heavily against the wall, waiting.

"Thank you," Tessa says, primly.

She casts a quick glance across the room. The chairs have been pushed to the side, the space in front of the mirrored wall left empty. Her phone is docked in the sound system by the window - she's double-checked that it definitely works _and_ has the temporary hearing loss to prove it. She has a vague idea of what she's trying to accomplish here, which she supposes is better than no idea at all. Nothing remains now except for her students to arrive. Judging by the gentle chatter of noise she recognises through the door as Natalie's voice, she won't have to wait long.

The door bursts open.

"Morning, Tessa!" Natalie calls, a cheery smile on her face. Her brown hair is pulled up into a loose ponytail, the ends curling over the neckline of her tank top. She looks thoroughly unaffected by the fact that it's barely seven in the morning. For that, Tessa can only envy her.

Tessa nods a greeting. "Good morning. Morning, Gabriel."

The slight figure trailing in behind Natalie freezes. "Oh," he says. "Um. Good morning."

Gabriel is dressed almost identically to the day before, in a high-necked grey jacket, zipped up as far as it will go, and plain black tracksuit bottoms. Short of wearing gloves, he's covered as much of himself as he possibly can; in the heat of late June, he stands out like a sore thumb. Funnily enough, Tessa suspects that was the exact opposite of his intention. She gives the two of them a few minutes to set their things down by the chairs at the side before taking up her position at the front of the room. Here are her students, ready and waiting - one of whom looks like she might burst if Tessa so much as glances in her direction, the other so tense and still that he’s all but rooted to the floorboards. Perfect. An untested lesson plan, a pair of guinea pigs who cover the entire spectrum of human emotion, and Scott lurking in the shadows, watching her every move like some overbearing school inspector. What could possibly go wrong?

"Okay," she says. "I thought it was about time I stopped hiding in the shadows and started making myself useful, so you're with me for the next hour. We're not going to do anything crazy, don't worry. This is really just a session for me to get to know the both of you - how you move, what kind of things come naturally to you and what might take a little more work. Once we've figured that out, we can start thinking about what your choreography might look like." She pauses. "Of course, this works both ways. If I'm going to choreograph for you, it's important that you feel comfortable enough with me to try things without fear of judgement. Hopefully what I've got planned for this morning will help us all out."

Natalie bobs up and down on the balls of her feet, nodding. Gabriel doesn't move, but Tessa's beginning to understand that no news is good news in that respect.

"Right then." Tessa moves across to the sound system at the side of the room. "We'll start simple. I'm going to put on some music for you. All I want to see is how you move to it - whatever comes into your brain, anything at all. It's not a test," she adds, as Gabriel pales to the very tips of his fingers. "There’s no right or wrong way of doing this. Again, this is just a way to help me understand how you move. Anything that I'm going to choreograph needs to work with the way your body wants to move, not against it. Does that sound okay with both of you?"

Gabriel swallows, hard - but he nods in unison with Natalie.

"Perfect," Tessa says, with an encouraging smile. "Just give it a go."

Once the music starts, it's obvious where the inhibitions lie. She deliberately chose a fluid, rhythmic piece, open to interpretation in a variety of ways. Natalie gets into the flow of the music almost immediately. Her movements are smooth, rippling outwards with ease; she seems almost to float across the sprung floor of the studio. Gabriel raises his arms - stops, starts, stops again. His eyes flicker desperately between Natalie and the ground. Tessa noticed the same thing yesterday, during the ballroom session she and Scott observed - a reluctance. There's a hesitation in the way Gabriel moves, like his muscles know what they're supposed to be doing but his brain slams on the brakes before he can go anywhere too quickly. She lets him struggle for a minute longer before pausing the music.

Instantly, Gabriel's arms fold across his chest. "You don't have to tell me it's terrible," he mumbles, his chin tucked into the high neck of his fleece jacket. "I already know."

Tessa's brow furrows. "I wasn't going to say anything of the sort. I know you can dance, Gabriel, I watched you perform perfectly in the rink yesterday. You don't have any shortage of talent or ability."

Gabriel looks as though he'd like nothing more than to disappear into his jacket. The way his shoulders climb further and further towards his ears, it's becoming a distinct possibility.

"It's clear to me that you're trying to make something happen," she says. "You start to go for a movement but there's something that pulls you back every time. What is that? What makes you stop?"

Again, Gabriel says nothing. He bites his lip, pulling his arms tighter around himself.

Tessa purses her lips, thinking. It's clear they're going nowhere with this conversation. Over Gabriel's shoulder, she can see Scott, still leaning against the wall. She wouldn't even need to see him to be aware of his presence; she can feel his eyes on her, casting judgement, no matter how well-intentioned. After spending her whole life under the media spotlight, being watched by those whose opinions she cares about is far more terrifying than a sea of strange faces. And maybe she's not the only one.

"Natalie, Scott, would you mind stepping outside for a minute? It won't be long, I promise."

She expects protest - but to her surprise, Scott doesn't so much as offer her a raised eyebrow. "Sure," he says, without hesitation. "C'mon, Nat. Let's give them some space, eh?"

Natalie frowns, her eyes darting towards Gabriel. "O-kay. We'll be right outside if you need anything..."

Tessa waits until the two have left the room, the door clicking shut behind them. The room seems even larger now, Gabriel standing by himself in the vast, empty space of the dance floor. His fingers, thin and pale, fold over his jacket sleeves like the bars of a cage. Chin slanted down towards the ground, his blonde hair falling forward across his face, she can’t see his eyes, but she doubts they’ll tell her anything beyond the patently obvious: Gabriel would rather be anywhere else than here.

With a terrible scraping sound, Tessa drags two chairs over to the front of the room. Gabriel looks up, startled.

"What are you doing?" he says. The words come out less like a question and more like a statement, all at one unchanging pitch.

She sits herself down in one chair, motioning for Gabriel to take the other. Through the curtain of his hair, his green eyes fasten onto hers. The look in his eyes is cold, suspicious, but he takes the seat offered to him. She has his curiosity, at least.

For a few, long moments, they sit in silence.

Gabriel is the first one to speak. "Why did you send everyone else out?"

"I wanted to talk to you," Tessa says, simply. "With no distractions for either of us."

"We're not doing very much talking."

"I'll follow your lead. If there's anything you want to ask me, fire away."

Gabriel tilts his chin up, his hair falling away from his face. Bingo, Tessa thinks.

"Actually," he says. "There is. You said no distractions. You think Nat's a distraction?"

Tessa shrugs. She leans forward in her seat, clasping her hands together on her knees. "Sure. Partners are always distracting. I should know, I spent my career with the biggest distraction of them all. Even if he wasn't such a show-off, it would still have been difficult. Everyone assumes that life is easier when you have a teammate to share everything with. They're not wrong, but that doesn't mean there are no challenges. For the first few years of our partnership, Scott and I barely spoke. Even after that, I was so worried about falling behind him that I had nightmares every night for months. I was convinced one day our coaches would wake up and realise that I was simply holding him back."

“It’s not like that with me and Nat. I’ve skated with her since I was fifteen, and there’s never been anything like that,” Gabriel says hotly.

“I’m not saying there is. I just noticed that every time you started to dance, you’d look across at her. And then you’d stop. I won't presume to know what things are like between the two of you. I only know that it took me years to become comfortable in my own skin - _especially_ with a partner like Scott, who always seemed so comfortable in his."

Gabriel looks down at his hands, folded in front of him as if he’s on trial. “It’s not like that,” he repeats, quieter. “Nat’s always been there for me. She’s my best friend.”

From the corridor outside, Tessa can hear laughter: Scott's, muffled and joined by Natalie's excitable chatter. There's a part of Gabriel that has been told to follow orders, to respect his coaches, to seek approval; it wars with the desire for privacy, to shield himself from any outside inquisition. Tessa knows because the exact same fractions exist within herself.

“Natalie’s my partner,” he says, twisting a hangnail between his thumb and forefinger. “There’s no one I trust more than her.”

Tessa resists the urge to press him. She lets him take his time sorting out the words in his head.

“Nat never knows what she’s doing, but it doesn’t matter. Everything she does looks like she always meant to do it, like it’s all natural. And then – then there’s me.” His gaze darts towards the door as soon as the words leave his mouth. "I don't - it's not like I don't appreciate how talented she is. There are things Nat does that I wouldn't even have a clue about. I don't want this to sound like I resent her, or anything like that. She's never been anything but supportive."

"I don't doubt that," Tessa interjects, gently. She can sympathise. It's difficult to have a partner who happens to be naturally gifted in ways that you have to fight tooth and nail to achieve. When the whole world expects you to be two souls perfectly in tune with one another, the tiniest grain of discontent can become a fixation. "But if I asked Natalie to come back in now, would you tell her what you just told me?"

Gabriel looks at her like she’s struck him. “No, of course not. That would hurt her. You’re not – you won’t tell her, will you? Please don’t tell her.”

“I won’t,” Tessa says, and the sudden panic drains from Gabriel’s frame. “But I think _you_ should. Not necessarily now, or even this week, but it’s important to talk about things like that. You should be able to communicate without having to hide anything away. It'll only weigh you down."

Gabriel twists his hands in his lap, but he nods. "I'll - I'll think about it."

“I want you to remember something else,” Tessa adds, fixing her gaze on him. “You have your own worth. I’m sure there are things Natalie relies on you for, things that you’re able to accomplish only because of what you bring to the partnership. They might not be as showy as what Natalie can do, but they’re every bit as important. You and Natalie are a team. You can only be as strong as each other.” She smiles, her voice softening. “I promise you I’m speaking from experience here. Without the motivation of committing to another person, Scott and I would never have made it past the junior level. He’d probably be spending six hours a day working out how to knee slide the entire length of the rink, or something equally ridiculous.”

Astonishingly, Gabriel gives a tiny chuckle of laughter. He looks almost as surprised as Tessa does at the sound that comes out of him - he goes still immediately afterwards, his back straightening.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to - I don't - that just reminded me of something."

Tessa quirks an eyebrow.

“Please don't tell Scott, but back when he first started coaching Natalie and me, I don't think he had any clue how to manage us,” Gabriel says. “We were the first team he trained by himself. And me and Nat, we were just kids. This one time we had the worst practice session - like, _really_ terrible, the kind that makes you want to pack it all in. The next day, Scott wouldn't let us even set foot in the rink. Instead, we spent the whole day doing those dumb team-building exercises - you know, trust falls and building a bridge out of spaghetti, all that shit? Anyway, the day ended with this arm-wrestling tournament. Somehow Scott convinced Patrice to get involved. He breezed through every round, beat Scott hands-down in the final. It took all three of us clinging on to his one iron bicep to finally get it down. It was the least productive day of training we ever had. But we got back to the rink the next day, and everything was completely fine again. It was like that terrible session had never even happened."

Gabriel sighs, shaking his head.

"I dunno what I'm trying to get at," he says. "You talked about distractions. I guess it’s that sometimes the distractions are worth it."

Those words stick with Tessa long after she’s called Natalie and Scott back in, neither of whom comment on the ‘just a minute’ that turned into fifteen.

“We’re going to repeat the exercise once more,” Tessa explains. “Same music, same principle. Whatever comes to mind.”

She presses play on the music again. Once again, Natalie gets right into the rhythm of the music, and once again, Gabriel falters. Tessa deliberately averts her gaze from him. She focuses on watching Natalie for a good thirty seconds, lets her attention hone in on the details of Natalie’s movement, the way she slides from one position to the next. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Gabriel collect himself. He doesn’t look over to Natalie. Instead he shakes his head quickly, takes a breath – and when he starts to move again, there’s purpose in it. His arms no longer jerk from one position to the next, second-guessing every angle. There’s an intense look of concentration on Gabriel’s face, his brow screwing up tight, but his movements are complete and finished – a world away from his first attempt.

Tessa lets the music play to the end, the final beats hanging in the air. “Excellent job.”

Natalie glows with pride. Gabriel’s hands return to his sides, but he gives Tessa a tiny nod and the faintest hint of a smile.

She allows herself one fleeting glance at Scott, who stands silently at the side of the room. He’s not smiling. There’s a funny expression on his face; a kind of wistful look, proud and sad and lonely.

There are distractions in the sense that Gabriel was referring to, and then there's whatever Scott is - the kind of distraction that seems to warp everything around it, like he has his own personal field of gravity designed solely to make wreckage from her carefully-laid life plans. If she ducks her head and pretends not to notice, then she can tell herself it doesn’t matter - but she won’t forget the look on his face. She sees more than she expected, maybe more than she wanted to. There's something in Scott's eyes that skirts dangerously close to longing. His eyes meet hers for the briefest of moments; barely time to register that he's clocked her staring, certainly not long enough to pretend she wasn't. 

She sees behind his guard for just a second. Whether she wants to or not, neither of them will forget. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual, thanks to my lovely beta and you can find me over @virtueoso on Tumblr. Thanks also to Tessa's diamond glitter bodysuit in the Thank You Canada Tour for no reason other than it changed my life.


	3. Chapter 3

It's comforting to know that no matter how much in Tessa's life changes, she will always know the city of Montreal like the back of her hand.

Even three years since she last visited, even with the streets dark as they roll by the windows of Scott's car, she recognises it all. There's the tiny café on the corner, run by the lovely old couple who used to slide her a cupcake with her salad every Friday lunch; there's the only salon in the entire city she trusted with her hair; there's the little alleyway that runs down to the river, winding around the perimeters of office blocks and twenty-first century life before emerging to a small river overlook. She and Scott spent countless afternoons there, sitting in the glorious sunshine once training was through, warming their tired muscles. It was a little slice of secret history amongst the chaos of the city - like so much of Montreal. Street upon street, the city seems to shift from one universe to the next. Rows of skyscrapers, towering metal and wrought steel, push up against grand old stone buildings, rising out of the landscape as though they were hewn from the very earth.

There's always been something about Montreal that captivated her - and it wasn't just the people in it.

Tessa casts a quick glance over to her designated chauffeur. After offering to give her a lift back to her hotel (and appearing equally as surprised as she was when she actually accepted), he's been silent for the whole journey. She doesn't know why she said yes - money saved on the taxi fare? Control over the music choice? All she knows is that he asked, and some instinctive, long-dormant part of her hijacked the larger, thinking part and said yes.

By the time they pull up outside the hotel, it's started to rain. The rain is gentle at first, pattering on the windshield, but the air outside will be thick and close with it, Tessa knows - the humidity of a midsummer downpour. Scott switches off the engine. The music cuts out abruptly. On the dashboard, the glowing red letters of the clock blink out. The world beyond is blurry through the wash of rain; only broad smears of colour, cut with bursts of neon light as cars speed past. Scott doesn't say anything, but he doesn't move either. He simply sits there, watching the rain pour down the windshield.

She doesn't want to go, she realises - and that's exactly why she has to. Being in Montreal makes things seem dangerously possible again. She needs to put some distance between herself and this weekend, before she gets sucked into something much bigger than she intended.

Quickly, she clears her throat. "So, um. This was good."

Scott turns towards her with a smile. He's not so afraid to meet her gaze any more - that in itself is terrifying.

"Yeah," he says. "It was. Fancy doing it again some time? Only because Nat's head over heels for you already, and what you managed to do with Gabe - it was nothing short of incredible, Tess, the way he completely switched after you talked to him. "

Tessa hesitates. "I don't-"

"I know, I know," Scott grins, exhaling. "Getting ahead of myself like always. I just want you to know there's a place for you here, if you want it. The free dance is all yours."

"Thank you," she says, with a half-smile. "I'll think about it."

"'Course. You've got my number, drop me a line when you've decided one way or the other. We'll have to get moving with alternatives by the end of the month so if you could let me know before then, that'd be handy.”

Tessa nods.

"I'm not..." he begins, and then stops. The smile flickers on his face; only for a second, but Tessa catches it before he can cover it up. "No, never mind."

There’s a question tugging at his lips, making his hands skitter across the steering wheel.

“Go ahead,” she says.

Scott's eyes dart up to meet hers. “Have you _really_ not skated since we stopped touring?”

The rain hammers on the roof of the car, filling the stony silence that follows his words. Tessa's lips draw into a thin line. They don't need to have this conversation now; as far as Tessa is concerned, they don't need to have this conversation at all. But he's asked, and she's trying, so she'll answer as diplomatically as possible.

“No, I haven’t," she says, careful with her words. "I told you as much in my emails.”

“I guess you mentioned it, but I didn’t think…not until Nat asked you to demonstrate, and it was like someone put a gun to your head.”

“I don’t exactly make a habit of announcing it everywhere I go. It's embarrassing."

Scott tenses, his brow furrowing. “No, I know you must have your reasons, I just – I couldn’t imagine not skating for a week, let alone…how long has it been?”

Three years, six months, three days. Not since the day she and Scott announced their retirement.

Tessa shrugs. “About three years, maybe? At least since I moved to Paris. I stopped keeping track a while back.”

Scott makes a noise of disbelief. “Shit, Tess…Don’t you miss it?”

Every day, she thinks. Every moment of every day. Every morning, when she opens the door into work and it's not the blast of cold rink air greeting her. Every evening, when she comes home and flops onto the couch, muscles sore not from repetitions at the gym but from sitting all day on the same office chair. Every single winter, when the seasonal ice rinks pop up in the centre of Paris with their merry strings of Christmas lights and their loops of Christmas carols.

“No,” she lies.

There’s a moment where Scott stares at her, and she can’t read a single thing from his expression – blank as a slate scrubbed clean. Then he shakes his head.

“Well, you’re a stronger person than me, but we always knew that.” He leans over to retrieve her gym bag from the backseat of the car. The lump in her throat threatens to choke her; she wants to say nothing and everything all at once. “Guess I’ll see you around then,” he says. “Let me know what you decide. Either way, I’m glad we could do this again. Kinda reminded me of old times, you know?”

Tessa doesn't say anything, doesn't trust herself.

She nods and gets out of the car without so much as a backward glance.

Inside the hotel, she stands at the windows of the lobby, looking out. The rain smears shapes and colour into one another. It's hard to tell what is Scott's car and what is nothing at all; she stands and watches until all colour fades into the darkness of the night.  
  


* * *

  
Paris has five rinks, only two of which are functional year-round.

One sits on the edge of an industrial estate at the city perimeter, the kind of area that Tessa normally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot bargepole. The other lies in the middle of the 8th Arrondissement, the most desirable real estate in the entire city. The building is a work of art in itself: pale, sand-coloured stone with red brick detailing and elaborate archways cresting every window. Unfortunately, Tessa's extensive Googling also uncovers that the rink in the 8th is full to the brim with tourists every day of the week.

So it's at the former that Tessa turns up, skate bag in hand, at seven a.m. the morning after her flight back from Canada.

She walks straight past the place twice before realising it’s her destination. From the outside, the rink is nothing but a large warehouse, grey and featureless, surrounded by deserted car parks and shuttered office buildings. A lone, scruffy-looking teenager greets her at the front desk with a look of surprise, waves her on through before returning to watching tennis on a dimly-flickering television hanging from the ceiling. The hallways are long and narrow, closed doors lining her way. Light pitches down from fluorescent strips set into the ceiling, outlining every worn detail of the place in stark white. There’s not a single other person in the halls, but the rink, when she finally emerges into it, is reassuringly clean. The ice looks good too, freshly resurfaced.

Tessa dumps her bag in the stands. Within lie her skates, glinting white against the black satin of the bag lining. The leather is pristine, reluctantly broken in after her Pyeongchang skates finally disintegrated on her. She kept the blades clean and sharp - not that they were ever used. Every three months, someone would collect them for re-sharpening, and every three months, the boots would stay buried in their bag on the floor of her hall cupboard.

It feels almost sacrilegious to even think about putting them on her feet again.

She goes through the motions with care: removes one sneaker, then the other; slides one foot into the white shell, then two, entombed. Carefully, she laces up her boots, folding hand over hand and pulling tight in an intricate pattern that comes to her without thinking. Years ago, lacing her skates was a moment for reflection, alongside Scott in the back halls of whatever competition they were attending that week. There was comfort in hearing his laces rasp through the eyelets, the creak of leather as he knotted the lace off. They were soldiers, preparing to head into battle together; sharing little rituals in silence bound them closer than speaking ever could.

There’s silence now, as she finishes her laces and gets to her feet.

The sheet of ice stretches out in front of her, untouched.

Scott loved to be first on the ice after a resurfacing, the same way he loved to be the first person to crunch through freshly-fallen snow, the first to swan-dive into a pile of raked leaves (and the first to sweep them back up again). Tessa thought only of the work it took to make something so perfect and pristine.

She unhooks her skate guards and places them on the boards. Is she holding her breath? The world seems to hold its breath with her, silent and still and waiting. All she can think is that at least if she falls over here, there's no one to witness it.

Her first steps are tentative, like she's seven years old again, and she hasn't spent more time with her feet on the ice than on solid ground. She pushes off first with one foot, then the other, picking up speed slowly. Her muscles creak into action beneath her, shaking off the rust of three years. She balls her hands into fists at her side. It's automatic - or at least, it tries to be - her fingers wanting to open, ready for a palm to slip against hers, her step to fall in time with another's. There are sounds she notices now that never occurred to her before: the scraping of her blades against the ice, conspicuous in their solitude, the breeze rifling through her hair as she continues to pick up speed, no words to be heard over the top of it.

She carves turns deep into the ice, leaning into her edges as far as she can. Her legs burn, but she doesn't fall. Her fingers curl tighter and tighter into her palm, squeezing out the space, her teeth gritted. The faster she goes, the more the world around her blurs, the more she could be anywhere, any time, any place, where the hand in hers is warm and comforting.

The breath drawn quick and fast from her lungs isn't alone any more; it's joined by a deeper, heavier sound. There's laughter - there was always laughter - and she's smiling, spinning around and around. The rink around her is a whirlwind, but she spots herself on a pair of brown eyes, steadfast and kind, lined with age. A hand reaches out to steady her as she exits out of the spin; she doesn't need it, takes off up the rink with a grin and a wink. Someone calls something after her but she can't hear, the words lost to the wind. She whips around, turning on her heel to orient himself - always towards him, the axis of her orbit.

And then - she blinks. She's alone in the rink, skittering to a halt on the ice. The faintest whispers of a memory clutch at the corners of her mind.  
  


* * *

  
The third morning in a row that Tessa voluntarily pulls herself out of bed before sunrise to get to the rink, it begins to dawn on her that perhaps she misses more than the skating. It's also becoming abundantly clear that whatever this new lease of life on her morning activities might mean, she's going to struggle to keep things from Rose. Guilty conscience aside, caking on concealer for the dark circles under her eyes only goes so far. When she stumbles into the office at half eight, Rose is there waiting with a cup of coffee and a raised eyebrow.

"You look like hell."

"And a beautiful morning to you too, Rose."

Tessa takes the coffee offered to her and downs it in one go, wincing.

Rose eyes her carefully. "Everything okay in there, Tess? You've been a little all over the place since you took those days off for sick leave. Normally I wouldn't worry, but - well, this is you. You don't do 'all over the place'. Are you sure you're not coming down with something again?"

Tessa avoids eye contact as she switches on her laptop. Immediately, the chorus of a thousand tiny 'message received' _pings_ fill the air. She resists the urge to slam the mute button. "Everything's fine. I promise."

"I don't know..."

"Has someone complained?"

Rose’s expression darkens with hurt. “Can’t I be worried about you without a reason explicitly linked to our profit margins? I swear, sometimes I think..." She cuts herself off with a shake of her head, scoffing. "Forget I asked. We've got a meeting at one, in case that slipped your mind along with the fact that I actually care about you."

Guilt curls in Tessa’s stomach as she watches her friend walk away. She’s going to tell Rose at some point, she swears. Sooner or later she’ll pluck up the courage for it. There’s just something about explaining the situation to someone else - someone who knows her well enough to see through any weak excuses - that sounds frighteningly official. She’ll make it up to Rose later. Hopefully her friend won’t have already disowned her by then.

And really, what is she supposed to do? The rules of engagement are a little hazy. There's no self-help book for 'My Ex-Partner Waltzed Back Into My Nice Boring Life And Turned The Whole Thing Upside Down' - she's read enough of them to know. These things don't happen in real life; they happen in movies, in musicals, in the trashy romance novels she keeps at the back of her closet. They don't happen in her life. Not in year three of her five-year plan - her meticulously organised and terribly important new career and the mortgage on the flat that she's still paying off. And _when_ these things happen, they certainly don't lead to anything.

One weekend, she'd said. Two days - a flying visit.

How long would choreography take? A few days? Maybe a week, if she really pushed it? One week. What would that be? Barely anything more than the first time. A week wouldn't be so bad. People take a week for holiday all the time - and that's what it would be, really. A working holiday. Marie-France and Patrice might be there this time; it would be lovely to catch up. She could even drop by home, visit her family. Her mother would be overjoyed, wouldn't she? And Natalie and Gabriel, doesn't she owe it to them?

Really, Scott barely even factors into the decision.

She doesn't think of him at all.  
  


* * *

  
The club on the corner of Rue du Dahomey is a dive, but it gets the job done.

Tessa doesn’t dance - she’s too old for dancing at a club like this. She sits at the very end of the bar, drawing out her single vodka orange for as long as possible and ignoring the pointed looks from the bartender. The air in the club is thick, saturated with the smell of alcohol, the heavy mingling of perfume, deodorant and sweat. On any other Friday evening, she might be genuinely interested in the man who sidles up to her, his hands jammed into the pockets of his slacks.

He doesn’t waste any time.

“Let me get you a drink,” he says, leaning in close so she can hear him over the pounding music; his breath tickles the hairs on her neck. He stretches an arm out along the bar next to her and taps her glass, near-empty. “A lady like you shouldn’t have to buy her own.”

He’s older than most people she usually meets nursing a drink alone at the bar, old enough to be her age, maybe, or slightly older. His hair is dark under the dim lights of the bar - if she squints, it could be brown - and he’s got the kind of nose that hooks at the end, a proper beak. So she smiles, and she dips her head, and she lets him buy her a drink, and then two, and three, and four. He talks enough for both of them. All she has to do is nod and pretend to pay attention to his prattle, and let him slip his hand further and further up her thigh.

When he reaches the hemline of her dress, she wraps a hand around his wrist.

“We should get out of here,” she tells him, in a lowered voice. “Your place.”

His smile is all wrong, she thinks. It’s not kind or inviting; it doesn’t sit easily on his face. His smile flares like a struck match, bright and sharp, burning out as quickly as it begins. She doesn’t like his smile. But she downs the last of her drink, and then it doesn’t bother her anymore.

Later, back at his apartment (a penthouse suite in the 6th Arrondissement - of course he’d be a pretty boy with a bank account to match the size of his ego, that’s exactly her type), she thinks that perhaps it should bother her.

She shouldn’t like it as much as she does, the way he crams his hands under her dress, rough and eager, the polished wood of the hallway cabinet digging into her back. She’s not supposed to enjoy this; the strange room with a strange person, everything hazy enough that she doesn’t have to focus too hard on the way his mouth curves all wrong, that she keeps going to run her fingers through hair that isn’t long enough.

Unbuckling his trousers, he pauses. “What did you say your name was?”

“Amy,” she tells him.  

They don’t even make it to his bedroom. He fucks her over the dining table, his hands clutching at her like tangleweed. She doesn’t let herself feel any of it; her skin is marble, untouchable. With her eyes closed, her lips sealed, all she hears is him - the rasp of his breathing, the clink of his belt buckle as it rustles around his ankles, and _amyamyamyamyamy_.  
  


* * *

  
Penitence comes the morning after.

She doesn't go home; she slips out of his bedroom before he wakes, scooping up her dress from where she left it on the lounge floor. The entire apartment is tiled in marble, cool under her bare feet as she pads from room to room. In a small guest bedroom, in a high-backed chest of drawers shoved unceremoniously up against a desk and a fake potted orchid, she finds what she's looking for: a long, loose button-down shirt and a pair of denim shorts. Both are hopelessly oversized, but they'll do until she can change into the spare gym clothes she keeps in her locker at the rink. If the layer of dust covering the drawers is any indication, her gracious host for the evening won't miss them.

At the rink, she doesn't skate - her skates are at home, and she's not about to endanger life and limb in a pair of rentals (somehow she doubts the dodgy warehouse rink with one paying customer has a robust health and safety policy). She sits on the bench by the boards, turning her phone over in her hands. The rink is silent, church-like, only the steady drip of the leaking roof keeping her company.

She aches like hell.

Scott gave her his number at the end of her weekend in Montreal - his new number, not the old one she kept in her contacts out of courtesy. She pulls up his contact page now, scrolls up and down the empty list of details, worrying her lip between her teeth.

She wants to see him again.

That doesn't have to mean anything.

Friends can miss friends. Friends can even fuck people who look conveniently like friends, and still maintain a respectful working relationship. They managed it for almost their entire career, after all. The ending ran away from them a little, but they're older now, wiser. Shouldn't they be able to act like two functioning human beings? Humans who talk to each other, and meet up when they're both in town, and lend each other favours at work? Even if ‘favours’ is a funny way to describe jetting off three and a half thousand miles across the Atlantic.

She wants to see _him_.  

Her hands are steady as she taps through to a new text message.

_One_ _week_ , she types. _I’ll give you one week._

Send.


	4. Chapter 4

It's not like it's a _secret_ that she's choreographing for Scott's team.

There's no addendum at the bottom of the text she receives in reply to her agreement to visit (two rows of smiley faces, sixteen party hats, and so many fireworks that Tessa has to scroll down to finish reading - at some point in the past three years, Scott evidently learned to use the emoji keyboard). In the emails they exchange later that week, sorting out the logistics of her trip, there's no small print about non-disclosure agreements or exclusivity contracts to be signed. Still, she keeps her notebook of choreography ideas stowed away in her bag during the flight. When the woman in the seat next to her leans over and asks what she's heading to Montreal for, Tessa tells the truth - or as much of the truth as she gave to Rose: she’s taking a week out to visit family. She simply omits the minor detail that for the first five days she won't be within four hundred miles of her mother's house.

When she arrives at Gadbois this time, she doesn't even make it into the rink before she's spotted.

“Tessa! You’re here!”

A Natalie-shaped blur rockets across the empty reception, scooping Tessa up into a bone-crushing hug. Amid the sensation of feeling like a chew toy in the jaws of a particularly enthusiastic puppy, Tessa thinks dimly that it's entirely unfair that Natalie is over fifteen years younger than her and still manages to be a good head taller. Looking intimidating and aloof is much harder from down below.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Tessa, you have _no_ idea what it’s been like having to manage Scott and Gabriel by myself,” Natalie says, relinquishing her hold and stepping back. "Scott's been so jumpy the whole time you were away, I swear he looks like he's been electrocuted every time his phone buzzes. I've never seen him so unimpressed with his NHL newsletter. Anyway, I can't wait for us to start working together! What are you thinking, do you have any grand plans for choreography? We've discussed it a little bit, me and Gabe and Scott, and we're completely open to your ideas! Whatever it is, I _know_ it'll be fantastic."

Tessa blinks. There should be a full-time university degree dedicated to deciphering the machine-gun pace of Natalie’s speech. Shakespearean English hasn’t a patch on the intricacies of conversation with an excitable twenty-one year-old.

“It’s lovely to see you again, Natalie, thank you,” Tessa says. “I do have a few ideas up my sleeve but I’ll let them stay a surprise until tomorrow, if you don’t mind waiting that long.” She looks around briefly. There’s no sign of Gabriel or Scott - or anyone, in fact, except an amused-looking receptionist hiding a smile behind her desk. “Where is everyone? Did I frighten them off?”

Natalie’s face lights up. “Oh! Right, yes, I’m supposed to take you to the office. Follow me please! I’ll take this for you, don’t worry” – she grabs Tessa’s suitcase before Tessa can even reach out a hand to stop her, and charges off through a set of double doors at the side of the reception.

It's a well-known fact that attempting to follow the signage on the walls of Gadbois leads in circles; the inner workings of the centre are a mystery known only to those who walk the halls. It's just as well, then, that Tessa made sure to wear sensible shoes - otherwise her guide would be out of sight within seconds. Whichever office she's being led to, it's nowhere near where it used to be in Tessa's day.

"It's just along this corridor," Natalie calls over her shoulder, "and then right, left, up the stairs, left again, through the double doors and past the second set of lockers, but if you hit the _third_ set with the butterfly sticker on the front, you've gone too far."

"Right," Tessa says. "I'll take your word for it."

Her trainers squeak on the linoleum. She's determined not to break into a run, but to keep pace with Natalie (even a Natalie laden with a suitcase), she might have to. Natalie chatters incessantly as they go, filling Tessa in on what she's missed over the past three weeks. The overriding message, from what Tessa can gather, is how uneventful life has been without her - which is sweet, she supposes. They push through another set of double doors, up a small stairwell, and stop abruptly outside an unmarked red door on the floor above.

“We’ve arrived,” Natalie announces, not out of breath in the least.

Tessa raises an eyebrow. “Do we knock? I’m looking to you for the correct etiquette.”

Natalie grins and kicks the door open with her foot. “Tessa’s here!” she yells.

Tessa is beginning to regret her decision not to take ear plugs.

“Incorrect, Natalie,” comes a familiar woman’s voice, deep and rich and lyrical, and Tessa's heart leaps in her chest. “What did we say about entering the office?”

“But-“ Natalie stammers. “Tessa’s-“

“Even more reason for you to conduct yourself with some decorum, no? Do you want Tessa to think we are nothing but animals?" Marie-France says, but her frown melts into a beaming smile as soon as Tessa pokes her head around the doorframe.

The old office at Gadbois was little more than a glorified broom closet, welcoming as possible given the circumstances, but so small there was barely room for the few armchairs squashed inside. The new office is nothing short of luxurious. A leather sofa and matching armchairs are clustered in the centre of the room, a laptop resting on the coffee table between them. A sleek black countertop at the corner of the room divides the office from a small kitchenette, which looks at first glance to be well-equipped; at the very least there’s a proper coffee machine, which makes it better than her own office already. At the far end, large windows look out onto the main rink.

Pictures hang from every available wall – pictures of Marie-France and Patrice, of old teammates, friends, and choreographers, and in the corner furthest from the door, a small, square photo of her and Scott. Their arms are wrapped around one another, heads leaning together, matching smiles on their faces. She remembers the day it was taken - the day before they announced their return to competition, back when both they and the world were ignorant of what was to come.

"Tessa, _ma belle_ ," Marie-France says, and Tessa drags her gaze away from the picture. "It is so good to see you again. Please excuse your guide, she is a little overexcited. You made quite an impression with your first visit, I think. Patch and I were _distraught_ when we thought we might have missed you. When Scott told us you would be returning to choreograph - well, there was much celebration. And much celebration still to come, I hope!"

Age has always been kind to Marie-France. In another life, Tessa would have accused her of bathing in the blood of virgins or something equally ludicrous. Marie-France doesn’t obey mundane human laws like the ageing process; she remains as perfectly put-together and impeccably-dressed as she has been for the entire time Tessa has known her.

Marie-France strides forward to wrap Tessa into a hug. “We’re so pleased to have you back.”

Technically, she’s not ‘back’. She’s visiting. Temporarily. Passing through.

“I should have come sooner,” Tessa says, muffled against the other woman’s shoulder.

Marie-France waves a hand as she pulls away. She holds Tessa out at arm’s length, looking her over. “I won’t hear it. What matters is that you are here now. Little has changed in your absence, I am afraid, though it seems we cannot say the same for you! Things in Paris must be booming for you to be so busy, yes? It must be _wonderful_. Such a glamorous city.”

Tessa gives a weak smile. “It has its ups and downs, but there’s always a lot of work to be done. Keeps me on my toes.”

“Well,” Marie-France says, smoothing her hands along the arms of Tessa’s jacket, like she used to do in the last minutes before they took the ice at competition, fussing over Tessa’s costume. “Nothing in life is ever easy, hm? I’m sure you will find your way through.” Perhaps Marie-France notices the way Tessa’s smile wavers on her face, because she gives a quick squeeze and drops her hands from Tessa’s arms. “Now, you must be tired after your flight. Rest here for a little while. I will take this noisy one,” – Natalie gives an affronted ‘hmph’ – “and see about finding the boys.”

“Oh, no, don’t worry-“ Tessa tries.

Marie-France doesn’t have to say anything. She simply levels Tessa with a silent stare; the look in her eyes is kind but steely. Tessa was always a little terrified of Marie-France, however motherly the older woman appeared ninety percent of the time. Like Tessa’s own mother, Marie-France had the ability to cut through a conversation with nothing but a look.

“Rest,” she says. “There are blankets under the sofa. Nobody will disturb you here.”

Tessa relents. There’s no arguing with Marie-France.  
  


* * *

  
The sofa is, indeed, very comfy.

Too comfy, in fact. Combined with her ever-present mild exhaustion, the soft wool blanket she’s pulled from underneath the couch, and the fact that her body remains unconvinced it’s not still in Paris (and eight hours closer to a good night’s sleep), Tessa knows she’s fighting a losing battle.

She _swears_ she only closes her eyes for a second.

The next thing she knows, she's jolting awake to the sound of metal clattering from the kitchen. She jerks her head up from the sofa - too quickly, the muscles, stiff from sleep, twinge in protest.

“Hello?” she says, rubbing a hand across her neck and wincing as she sits up. Pulling a muscle is probably some kind of karmic retribution for napping her way through her first proper day of choreography.

At the sound of her voice, the figure in the kitchen straightens like a puppet pulled on strings. She frowns, blinking away the bleary haze of sleep, watching as the figure turns to face her and - Scott meets her eyes with a slightly guilty look. Clutched in his hands is a small mug emblazoned with a moose head; steam drifts off the top in lazy spirals. The smell of hot chocolate wafts across the room.

Huh. So much for Marie-France’s assurance that she wouldn’t be disturbed.

“Hey, Tessa,” he says, casually. “How’s it going?”

He tries to lean against the counter behind him. Instead, his head whacks into the open cupboard door above with a resounding ‘thwack’.

Tessa struggles to keep a straight face. She’s never considered Scott ‘smooth’. That ship sailed around age fourteen, when she walked in on him rehearsing pick-up lines for the post-competition banquet in the bathroom mirror of his hotel room. But it’s rather sweet that he’s trying. He doesn’t even bring a hand up to rub against the back of his head; he just stands there, closed-lipped, stoic.

"If you’re going to make a habit of sneaking in to make hot chocolate while people are sleeping," she says, "the least you could do is make one for them as well.”

Scott nods, three times in quick succession. “Right. Yeah. I’ll remember that for next time.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Next time?”

“Oh, you know me,” he says. “I live in hope.”

There's a strange, uncertain look on Scott's face, like she's caught him undecided between embarrassment and bravado. Tessa takes pity on him; she smiles, and that's enough to unroot him from his position by the kitchen cupboards and join her on the sofas. He doesn't take the empty spot next to her, but he settles down in the closest armchair. One arm stretches out along the side of the chair, the other cradling his mug against his chest.

"Ahh," he sighs, leather creaking underneath him as he sinks back into the chair. "Peace and quiet."

“I gather that’s a rare occasion."

“With Nat around? You bet.” He grins, and blows gently on his drink. “So I gotta admit, I'm surprised Marie managed to convince you to take a power nap. Would have thought you'd rather be tearing your hair out than playing Sleeping Beauty up here."

Tessa grimaces, pushing off her blanket. "Believe me, it doesn't sit well with me either. I'm only still here because I'm too afraid of her retribution."

Over the lip of his mug, Scott gives her an offended look. “Not for the pleasure of my company?”

“ _You_ woke me up and didn’t even have the decency to offer hot chocolate in compensation.”

“Sounds like a yes to me.”

He takes a sip of his hot chocolate; Tessa smirks slightly when she sees him wince from the heat. Serves him right.

“So," he says, coughing, "how was your flight?”

“Not great. The border security officer at Montreal recognised me. I spent at least ten minutes holding up the queue of arrivals, it made me very popular.”

Scott’s eyes gleam with interest - never a good sign. “Ooh, they ask about me?”

Tessa gives him her most pleasant smile. “Sure,” she says. “I told them you finally abandoned your coaching career in pursuit of your true purpose in life – finding another human who could sit through your jokes for longer than an hour.”

Ready, aim, fire. He makes it far too easy for her.

Scott grimaces, clutching at his chest. “Oof. It stings, T.”

He says it so carelessly that it almost passes her by – he used her old nickname.

Over the course of their career, she collected more nicknames from Scott than she could count on both hands. He had nicknames depending on his mood that day, nicknames for special occasions, nicknames for every possible excuse he could find to give them to her. Patrice once told him that if he put half as much effort into training as he did to his encyclopedia of Tessa nicknames, they could be done by noon on a Wednesday. As a whole, the names didn't make much difference to her - 'Tess', 'T-Dog', 'Virtch', whatever he decided he was going to use that day - but she always liked it when he called her 'T'. She liked the way he said it too, soft and relaxed. The other letters in her name were extraneous; one was enough for anybody to know who Scott meant.  

Did he mean to call her that again, or did it simply slip out, automatic, before he could think to stop it? She's staring now, she realises - and Scott's giving her a strange, puzzled smile. He's asked her a question, maybe, or he's said something and expects an answer instead of dumb silence and a blank look.

“Hot chocolate moustache,” she says, quickly.

“What?”

She raises her eyebrows, swiping a finger across her top lip. “You have a hot chocolate moustache.”

“Oh,” he says, grinning. He runs his tongue across the length of his perfectly clean upper lip. “Thanks.”

His tongue is very pink.

“So, um,” she clears her throat, shifting in her seat. “Is everything ready for tomorrow?”  

“Pretty much. The stage is all set for you. I was gonna ask, actually, do you want me on the ice as well? I can sit in the stands, by the boards, whatever’s good. Minimal distraction duty.”

Tessa hesitates. It’s difficult enough when Scott’s in the same room; she doesn’t think she’s quite ready for the awkwardness of taking the ice together. There’s barely space in her brain to deal with her actual job here, let alone remembering that she’s _not_ supposed to take his hand when he skates up next to her.

“Would you mind?” she says. “I don’t want to exclude you from your own training session, but…”

Scott nods; once, twice, his shoulders coming up. If he’s disappointed at all, he doesn’t show it. His smile is as easy as ever. “Say no more. You need space to create genius.”

Tessa gives a wry smile. “I’m not sure that ‘genius’ is the right word, but thank you. It’s nice to know that at least someone has faith.”

“’Course,” Scott says, grinning – and it tugs at her just a little, the way he says it, like it’s unfathomable he would ever have anything less than unswerving faith in her. “I’ll be there if you need anything. Otherwise just forget that I’m even around.”

Somehow, Tessa doubts that will come easily. Wherever he is, whatever she’s doing, Scott seems to take up all the space in the room.  
  


* * *

  
There’s a name for the feeling that floods her veins in the morning before her first choreography session with Natalie and Gabriel - pure, unfiltered terror.

She laces up her skates in the empty changing room. Patrice has arranged for them to have the rink to themselves and Natalie, Gabriel, and Scott are out there already, warming up. She’s as prepared as she can possibly be: long evenings spent studying the videos of Natalie and Gabriel that Scott emailed across on request; early mornings before work in her backwater Parisian rink, testing ideas for choreography against the music they’ve picked out, drilling old elements by herself, re-familiarising herself with the aches and pains of muscles long-unused. She’ll hardly be breaking out a flawless set of twizzles any time soon, but neither will she constantly second-guess whether her next step will send her flying over her toe pick.

Still, the ice-cold rush of fear does not abate.

A hundred different outcomes play in her head all at once. The uncertainty is petrifying. She has a job, she has a life – nice and safe, not something that makes her feel like she’s about to jump out of a plane without a parachute. Aren’t people supposed to settle down in their thirties? What is she doing instead? Uprooting her carefully-laid foundations for a chance at restoring her glory days?

She tightens her laces one last time and appraises herself in full-length mirror on the wall. Her ponytail is neat, tied high on the top of her head, her workout gear in correct order. If she felt as put-together as she looks, there would be no problem. As it is, she gives her ponytail one final adjustment and opens the door to the rink.

“Okay then, are we ready?” she calls, pushing down the spike of fear as Natalie and Gabriel turn expectantly towards her. There’s no amusement in their faces now, not even Natalie’s.

Tessa doesn’t look up into the stands. In the back of her brain, some part of her is aware that Scott’s eyes follow her every move – but that’s always been there, the innate knowledge of where Scott is, what he’s doing. It’s been drilled into her from the age of seven. It doesn’t fade simply because they haven’t seen each other in years. That sense of physical awareness, the knowledge of the way his body moves even if the person within has changed in ways that she can barely fathom – that counts.

But she pushes it out of her head and greets her students with a smile.

There’s work to be done.  
  


* * *

  
Tessa can lose herself entirely in the poetry of watching a program come together; the slow build of something from nothing. Back when she and Scott were still competing, the first week of the season was always her favourite - new music, new movement, everything inspiring and exciting and fresh. There was no feeling better than the satisfaction of crafting a new program, every day building on what came before.

She and Scott rarely took time to celebrate the completion of a training block, but they always made a point of it for the first week, with their new program freshly minted. The season of their comeback, they’d kept it classic -  a meal at a local Italian restaurant, Marie-France and Patrice in tow for plausible deniability. The season after, the Olympic season - and what they both understood was to be their last season - they did things differently. At Scott’s request, they flew down to Ilderton and spent the entire Saturday helping out at the club. They didn’t tell anyone in advance; they just turned up at ten as the under-11s beginners’ class was taking to the ice, and mucked in with the rest of the CanSkate volunteers.

She’d seen it on Scott’s face that day, clear as anything - coaching was where he belonged. When the kids toppled over their toepicks, he would scoop them gently back to their feet, dust them off, and give their helmeted heads a cheery pat. He watched each and every skater, offering quick advice or words of encouragement; nobody was beneath his time. By the end of the hour session, he’d amassed a train of devoted followers, and (if he didn’t have one already) an open job offer to work with the junior dance teams at the club.

She and Scott had always talked about how they wanted to give back to their sport, but it wasn’t until that weekend, seeing how thrilled _he_ was to be following through on that promise, that made her really believe in it.

Now, seven years later, here she is choreographing for one of his teams.

Her brief for Natalie and Gabriel’s choreography was unhelpfully vague: something different. She’s spent enough time familiarising herself with their previous free dances that she has some idea what ‘different’ means in this situation, but for the most part, she lets the music dictate the movement. Their free dances are typically bold, dramatic; the music they’ve picked for this season is sparse and elegant. There’s a beautiful rise and fall to it, an effortless sort of ebb and flow; that’s what she tries to keep throughout the entirety of the three hours they spend on the ice.

The pair are tentative at first, following her instructions without question. Their silence unnerves her. She’s come to expect it from Gabriel, but certainly not from Natalie; both of them barely say a word as Tessa demonstrates the opening choreography, nodding in time. At first, she thinks that perhaps it’s only determination – perhaps this is how they are when it’s time to settle down and get to work. Perhaps it’s because she’s new and intimidating and it’s difficult to bare your creative soul to someone you met only once before. But she remembers what it felt like to be told where and when to go, to feel out of control of your own career; no matter how young this team are, she doesn’t want the same for them.

The next time they go to copy her movements, she stops them.

“Why are you doing that?” she says.

Natalie frowns, her hand hovering in its prepared position on Gabriel’s shoulder. “You told us to. Should we not?”

“Is this how you’ve always learned choreography? I can’t imagine Marie-France would be happy with no input from the two of you.”

“Well, no,” Natalie says. Her hand falls away from Gabriel’s shoulder. “I just thought maybe this is how you work. It’s not like we were going to complain or anything, you’re…well, you’re you.”

Tessa considers them for a moment, then sighs. “I’m sorry.”

It’s much too easy to forget that she’s not choreographing for herself any more; there’s a whole new dynamic to consider, one that needs time and communication to establish. Choreographing for somebody else is like translating a foreign language. She knows the way her own body moves; the choreography makes full sense in her head, but it’s not enough to simply transpose her movements onto someone else’s body. There are words in her language that just don’t exist in others’. There are alterations to be made for meaning, for tone, for no reason other than this program should be owned by the people who are going to live and breathe it for the next nine months.

“I want you both to feel invested in this,” she says. “So please, tell me if there are sections you don’t like or sections you really do! I don’t want you to follow orders, and I certainly don’t want the program to be nothing but my skating transposed into your language – I want you two to own this.”

Natalie nods, and the smile that slides back onto her face is easier than the ones that came before.

During the next section of choreography - a sequence of transitional movements between their first lift and the twizzles - Gabriel stops halfway through his steps.

“Hey, um, this is supposed to be the lyrical section of the program, right?” he says, meeting Tessa’s eyes with a tentative look. “What about if I go for an Ina Bauer around Nat in between those piano chords? Maybe it’d be a bit smoother than stepping around her, I don’t know…”

Tessa gives him an encouraging smile. “Sure, of course, let’s give it a go and see how it works. Great suggestion, Gabriel.”

And it works, the movement smooth and filled with grace, and uniquely them. Tessa smiles. She can’t interpret the program for them; she wouldn’t want to - and besides, she would barely know where to begin. She doesn’t know how to put her finger on the dynamic of Natalie and Gabriel’s partnership. It’s not romantic or familial, not the kind of chemistry that can be neatly slotted into the usual parameters. It defies description. But she saw a glimpse of it once before, that little moment at the end of their introductory video, and she sees it again today, halfway through their final choreographic element. The music is gentle and elegant, and their expressions match – poised, peaceful, transcendent. In their last few steps, she watches their eyes meet; they’re not smiling, but neither are they sad. They’re simply content to stand and revel in that sense of connection.

That’s the feeling she wants for their free dance.

From up in the stands, she hears applause – Scott.

If she’s being honest, perhaps it’s what she wants for herself too.


	5. Chapter 5

“You don’t have to do this, you know. Actually, I think most decent people would actively encourage you to turn the car around right now.”

“I guess that makes you a terrible person, Tess.”

“What? No, let’s be clear here. You dug your own grave. I just helped lower you into it.”

“Come on, like I was gonna leave you stranded there. With your massive suitcase and your ‘help me’ eyes and your mum’s birthday card in the front pocket of your jacket? Heartless, that’d be.”

“There _were_ other options.”

Tessa’s second trip to Montreal started off perfectly to plan. The five days of choreography had gone swimmingly, Natalie had seemed even more heartbroken to be parted from Tessa the second time around, and Patrice had gone so far as to offer Tessa back her reserved parking spot (she had gracefully declined). A quick flight down to London for her mother’s birthday would round out the week. What was _not_ included in that plan was a seven-hour road trip between the two cities, but one freak storm (plus many cancelled flights) later, here she is: sitting in the passenger seat of Scott’s car with the ventilation system blasting out heat onto her bare legs. It seems the universe has a way of conspiring to put her in the places she’s been trying to avoid.

“I’m the one who dragged you over to Montreal in the first place, let me do something for my guilty conscience,” Scott says. “Anyway, this way I have an excuse to drop in on my folks. They’ll be over the moon. Bonus points if I turn up with you as well.”

Tessa shrugs. “Far be it from me to let down Alma and Joe.”

“Pretty sure that’s next to impossible,” Scott says, with a short laugh. “They still think the sun shines out of every freckle on your face.”

“Oh yeah? What about you?”

She doesn’t know why she asks - she doesn’t know whether she would like the answer either way. Maybe that’s why it comes out so quiet, barely audible above the rumbling of the car tyres and the howling of the wind outside. Scott takes his time, his eyes fixed on the road ahead; rows of street lamps pinprick the darkness like the lights of a runway.

“I dunno, Tess,” he says, sounding almost apologetic. “Jury’s still out.”

Tessa rests an elbow against the corner of the car window and props her head against her hand. She’s coming to appreciate the value of conversations in the car; she can take all the time she wants to stare at him, safe in the knowledge that his eyes will remain on the road.

“Better than blind hatred, I guess,” she says lightly. “I can’t be doing too badly.”

Scott blinks. His brow furrows. “Hatred? You genuinely think I hated you?”

“A little bit, yeah,” Tessa shrugs, like they’re discussing where to go for dinner, and not the events that drove them apart after twenty-three years together. “Why not? In your position, I might have hated me too.”

There’s a strange disconnect between the words coming out of her mouth and the things those words should make her feel. But there’s too much power in remembering – if she can say them like they don’t mean anything, at least she can say them at all.

“Hate was never part of it,” Scott says. “Not even in the first few days after you left. Never.”

The fierceness in his voice catches her off guard. There’s something else there too, amid the mixture of surprise and conviction, something that she doesn’t care to name. All she knows is that Scott is saying things she wishes he wouldn’t say, or maybe she wishes he’d said them sooner, and it’s all well and good to want better but the process of getting there _hurts_. He’s like a little child who never learned to pull away from things that are too hot to be touched. He just holds on, and holds on, and holds on, until his skin is black and burned.

She doesn’t want to hurt him again.

“Jeez, Tess,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. He’s trying to work up to something – she can tell by the way he fidgets, rolling the sleeves of his jacket up and back down again. “There’s a lot of stuff I regret about the last few years, but I don’t know if I could ever hate you. You don’t go through your whole life with someone just to let it all fall apart over a couple of bad decisions.”

“It sure felt like it to me.”

Scott falls silent. The car is beginning to get uncomfortably warm; Tessa’s bare legs stick to the seat when she uncrosses and crosses them again. She doesn’t know what’s going to come out of his mouth – what or how or when, it seems, every conversation with Scott catches her off guard.

“Tess, I-“

“I don’t want to talk about this now,” she says. “Please. I’m tired.”

He hesitates. Please, she finds herself thinking. Let this one go. Let the past stay buried for a little while longer. Let her have the luxury of spending time with him without the last three years hanging over her head.

“Fine, Tess,” he says, flicking on the radio; the music plays low and soft. She can’t read the expression on his face. “Have it your way. Get some sleep.”

For once, she doesn’t argue.  
  


* * *

  
She sleeps fitfully. Strange things come to her in dreams, too vivid, fully-formed, not the usual abstractions of sleep. Faces and words, all too familiar, float through her mind in a slow parade: her mother, disappointment well-hidden but ever present.

_I told you, sweetheart. Didn’t I tell you? Some men are nothing but a lost cause._

Scott, the way she remembers him as she walked out of his apartment one Saturday morning, three years ago. His eyes are still wide, his hair still mussed from sleep, her name still on his lips – but of all the people who pass through her dream, he is the only one granted the luxury of silence.

Marie-France and Patrice with all their well-meaning concern, every bit as oppressive as her mother’s.

_Scott sends his love, my dear. He wishes he could be here to see you off, but an emergency with one of his teams, you see…You must let us know when you are settled in Paris, I am sure there will be time to visit…_

And finally, her.

Tessa has never seen her in person, but she appears the way Tessa has always imagined her, from the photos she tried to ignore on Facebook – natural and perfect and laughing, always laughing. Red hair pushed back behind her ears, gentle, rounded features. Silver band on her ring finger, the light fracturing as it passes across the inlaid gem – too bright, Tessa has to shield her eyes or go blind.

_Tessa, love, I wanted you to hear it from us before anyone else got wind of it, there’s going to be a party this weekend and you know what those media types are like…goodness, he only told Joe and I a few days ago, it’s all happened so quickly…_

_Scott’s engaged.  
_

* * *

  
She barely knows when she wakes and when she sleeps.

Her current reality – Scott in the driver’s seat beside her, country music playing from the radio, highway lights flashing past the darkened windows – seems more like something she conjured out of her regret. If she speaks too loudly or stretches out to touch him, he might simply melt away.

In her dreams, Scott sings.

He’s tuneless – even her imagination abandons all hope when it comes to Scott’s singing - pitching low, stumbling his way up to the right notes. No one ever sang to her like Scott. He’d sing in the car, his head tilted back, belting out tune after tune; one hand would be on the wheel, the other rattling out a rhythm on her thigh. He’d sing in the shower, with or without her in it. She was convinced that was how their arrangement would one day be revealed to the world, that someone would catch Scott’s bathroom karaoke through a hotel wall and they would have to live with being outed by a shitty audio recording of ‘Jolene’ until the end of time.

He sang along with their programs, unfailingly, whether or not there were lyrics. For the first few days of every season, they would skate in silence, odd and alien. Then, one morning, the accompaniment would simply appear – the rough, crooked notes of his voice finding the melody with their skate. She’d barely need to pay attention to the backing track; Scott’s voice would be there, underpinning it all.

More than the music, that’s what she remembers: the way he sang to her.

The next time she wakes, it takes her half a minute to realise it, because Scott is singing here too. His head bobs in time with the music, his voice quieter than usual in an effort not to wake her.

She sits and listens to him. The song is unfamiliar – obscure enough for late night radio, but it’s evident that Scott knows it well. He’s only slightly off-key as he follows along with the music, his voice swooping along the rise and fall of the notes. His hands are unmoving on the steering wheel. There’s no sound but his voice and the radio, and the steady bass rumbling of the tyres on the road beneath them. Hearing him sing like this – quiet, unguarded, achingly close to how she remembers – is genuinely and surprisingly pleasant.

“I didn’t recognise that one,” she says, in the silence that follows as the last notes of the song trail away.  

Scott glances over towards her, startled.

“Hi. Still here,” she smiles. Scott begins to smile back at her, before catching himself and returning his gaze to the road. It stings, just a little.

“You sleep well?” he says.

“Not really, no,” Tessa says, and leaves it at that. She’s entirely uninclined to let Scott in on the fact that his fiancée haunts her dreams like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

“Sorry, probably my singing - I'll shut up next time, give you a chance to get some proper shut-eye."

“No,” Tessa says, too quickly – Scott darts a glance in her direction. “No, I mean, you don’t have to stop. I never sleep well anyway, and it’s…”

She struggles for the word – familiar? Comforting? Absurdly meaningful given that she’s heard him sing a hundred times before, in a hundred different ways, but none of it has ever meant as much to her as it does tonight?

“It’s nice,” she finishes.

Scott is silent for a moment, before bursting into laughter.

His laughter isn’t quiet or small – it heaves out of him in great gulps of air, drowning out the sound of the next song as it starts playing. He tips his head back, his body shaking with it. Tessa can’t help herself; once he’s started, her own laughter follows, growing larger and larger. They’ve both gone mad, she thinks. They’re going to end up wrapped around a tree because laughing was an easier solution to deflating the fraught, barbed tension between them than actually dealing with their problems like adults. But it’s not so terrible. Laughing with Scott until her eyes water, until she can barely breathe. It wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

“God, Paris has definitely changed you,” Scott says, in a long exhale of breath, wiping a tear from the corner of his eyes. “That, or it’s been way too long since you heard me sing.”

“I was _trying_ to be-“

“- _nice_?” Scott finishes for her. The smile rolls easily off him.

She bats a hand against his shoulder, rolling her eyes. “Shut up.”

Scott raises his eyebrows. “Not what you were telling me five minutes ago.”

“I said you could keep singing. I never said anything about talking.”

“Okay, okay, hold up a second. Let me get this straight. You’re saying you won’t complain about _anything_ that I sing? Not even if I break out the Springsteen?”

Tessa grins. She tucks her head against the headrest, watches Scott through half-closed eyes. “Not even then.”

He beams at her. “Excellent,” he says, and presses a button on the stereo. “Don’t mind if I do.”  
  


* * *

  
There’s a hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently. It’s warm and firm, insistent, and she tips her head away from it. Tired, she’s so tired, her eyelids are leaden weight.

“Leave me alone,” she mumbles. “Let me sleep.”

“No can do, Tess. Time’s up.”

The hand taps at her shoulder again.

“Go _away_ ,” she sighs, curling her body up and clutching her knees to her chest.

“I can drive you straight back to Montreal if you want, but that kinda defeats the purpose of this whole trip though, don’t you think? You were supposed to actually make it to your mum’s birthday.”

“What?” Tessa mutters. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re home, Tessa.”

Tessa reluctantly opens her eyes – and for a moment, the world is nothing but a smear of darkness outside the car windows and Scott’s amused smile. He must have leaned across to wake her up because he’s much closer than she remembers. It would be nothing to reach out and close the gap – nothing at all.

She shakes her head quickly, attempting to clear away the haze that seems to make patently ridiculous ideas feasible. “You drive too fast,” she grumbles, as she rubs her eyes.

“Don’t tell me you spent all that time and money fixing up your house only to slum it in the passenger seat of my car? Come on, sleepy.” Scott nudges her with his elbow – gently, he remembers well enough not to goad the dragon. “You’ve got a bed.”

“Your car has a rustic charm,” Tessa yawns, but he’s right. Beyond the fact that she really would rather not spend the night in Scott’s car, she doesn’t want to keep him out for much longer. He’s already driven into the early hours of the morning on her behalf.

She uncurls her legs and glances out of the side window. They’ve driven through the storm; the view beyond her window is still and quiet, pale moonlight outlining a familiar sight - her house. The place looks well kept; the front yard is tidy, the hanging baskets outside her front door still populated with clusters of pretty flowers. She may have avoided visiting for three years, but it’s good to know that her one child is being cared for. It was sentiment that made her buy the house – the first property she viewed, ignoring all the hallowed tenants of house-buying – and sentiment that led her to keep it. She couldn’t bring herself to sell the place, even knowing that she might not ever come back.

“You gonna be okay?” Scott says. “I mean, you have keys, right? I don’t want to leave you stuck outside all night.”

“Hm?” Tessa says, distractedly, turning to face him. “Oh, yes. Yeah, I’ll be fine, thank you. And thanks for the lift. You didn’t have to.”

“Great. Well, I guess I’ll head off then, go check on the folks.”

Neither of them move.

“You could stay,” Tessa offers. “Not for – only for a little while, but at least let me call you a taxi. It’s not safe for you to be driving alone this late. Leave your car here and pick it up tomorrow, it’s no trouble.”

Scott doesn’t hesitate for a second. If he notices the obvious flaw that he’s been driving practically alone for ninety percent of the journey anyway, he seems happy enough to forget it.

“Alright. Yeah, okay.”  
  


* * *

  
They end up perched on the front steps of Tessa’s porch, shoulder to shoulder. Against the starless night sky, it’s easy to imagine that nothing else in the world exists; there’s only the two of them, adrift in a great grass lake of midnight blue.

The street beyond Tessa’s house is quiet and empty, the roads long clear of any traffic except those foolish enough to make cross-country road trips in the dead of night. Scott’s hands are shoved deep into his pockets, his arms all but taped to his side. It’s cold, so Tessa will give him the benefit of the doubt, but there’s a strange energy that lingers between them regardless. Scott has a house to return to, parents to visit, a likely overwhelming desire to sleep – and yet, he’s here. She knows this dance well; she could invite him in for coffee, lead him to her bedroom, send him packing the next morning with promises to stay in touch that neither of them will keep. She could probably ask him even now, even after everything, and he’d agree.

It would be a lie to say she doesn’t consider it.

“You looked really good out there on the ice, you know,” Scott says. “Like you’d never been away. Have you been practicing?”

Tessa nods. “Yeah, at this run-down little rink in the middle of nowhere. It looks like the set of a horror movie, honestly, my mother would be scandalised if she saw. It’s nice though, always quiet and empty. Somehow it manages to stay open despite the fact that I appear to be the only paying customer.”

Scott grins. “Private ice? Sounds like a dream.”

“Yeah, it is. It’s good. It’s actually been nice to skate again.”

“Actually?” Scott teases. “Like it was _so_ bad the first time around. Winning those five Olympic medals was a real tough call.”

Tessa rolls her eyes, bumping her shoulder gently against his. “Don’t be a dick.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” he says, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying the actual _skating_ part of our skating career was never the problem.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” Tessa sighs.

They’re veering into dangerous territory now. Tessa can see it coming. The air is so still, so quiet; moonlight ripples through the grass, through Scott’s brown hair, everything dipped in shadow. She hasn’t bothered to turn the porch lights on, or perhaps she doesn’t want to. Things are easier in the dark. Perhaps the look in Scott’s eyes, the discontent, is only the dim moonlight shifting across him; perhaps the way his arms tremble at his sides is windchill; perhaps it’s nothing at all.

“Pyeongchang was the best month of my life, you know,” he says.

She lets his words sit for a while, lets the silence creep into every syllable, before she says: “Mine too.”

There’s a pinnacle, and then there’s the sudden, quick descent that follows. Everything that comes after can do nothing but hope to live up to what came before. In a way, she thinks that perhaps it was winning the gold that doomed them. There was no version of themselves that could ever be that transcendent again.

“Why did you ask me to come back to Montreal?”

Scott huffs a quiet laugh next to her. “No mucking around, eh?”

Tessa doesn’t answer.

“Ah, Tess,” Scott says, leaning back, propping his arms up on the decking of the porch. “Maybe some questions in life should be left alone.”

In the darkness, his smile shifts across his face, half-formed. Still, Tessa doesn’t say anything. She waits – and like always, he cracks first.

“Fine,” he sighs. “You want to know why I asked you? I asked because Natalie and Gabriel needed a new choreographer, someone with real ingenuity and a fresh perspective. You were the first person I thought of.”

Tessa shakes her head. “I think you’re lying.”

Hurt flashes across Scott’s face; it almost makes Tessa take her question back. Almost.

“What kind of truth would suit you then, Tessa?” – and she hates the way he says her name then, low and quiet, laced with bitterness – “One where I drop my entire life to run after you? One where you’re the only person who could ever understand me? One where I fuck up every chance at a relationship I’ve ever had, and it’s because of you – because I can’t ever get you out of my head? Take your pick. I can tell you all sorts of things, but I don’t think you’ve ever wanted to hear them.”

There’s no anger in his voice – she would gladly take his anger. His expression doesn’t change. Instead, she watches the tilt of his head, the rise and fall of his breathing. Scott always looked at her differently than every single other person in his life. His brothers used to tease him about it endlessly, the way that his eyes would drift over to her regardless of where they were, what they were doing, like a gravitational pull. Now he doesn’t even look at her as he speaks.

Deep down inside her, maybe there’s a part of her that wants all those things Scott spoke of – an ugly, selfish part that wants Scott tethered to her, wants to be the person who looms large over his life even when she’s not physically with him – but she shoves it away.  

“That’s not true,” she frowns.

“Don’t kid yourself, Tess. You don’t have any idea what’s true or not. You don’t get to come back after three years to sit here talking out of your ass.”

She clenches her jaw. “Stop talking to me like I’m a child. I know what happened.”

“Oh, you do?” Scott says, sarcasm twisting his voice. “Go ahead, then. Enlighten me.”

She knows what he’s trying to get out of her. He wants her to be cruel, to spit the evidence of his failures back in his face. Scott’s anger was always self-destructive; he simply used her as a sounding board for all the things he hated about himself.

“No,” she says, and she feels him tense up beside her – he’s prepared for her rebuke already, his body folding in on itself. Twenty-three years together gave them many things; nobody ever mentions that it gave them the knowledge of how to cut the deepest. She shakes her head. “I won’t do it. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The expression on Scott’s face twists downwards. “It’s a bit late for that, Tessa.”

“I know,” she says – and it’s not an apology, but it’s the closest they’ve ever come to one.

Three years ago, she thought she knew what she was walking away from – away from Scott and a lifetime of back and forth, too scared to take that leap over the edge; away from watching him grow tired of touring and living out of a suitcase and sleeping in a different city every night; away from being the ‘other woman’ to a lovely girl from Ilderton who wouldn’t deserve any of the mess that she and Scott inflicted on her. She never expected to have to come back and deal with the pieces that she left behind.

They sit quietly together, unmoving, her knee pressed up against his. Scott looks down at his hands; he clenches them into fists, unclenches them again, turns his palms over in his lap. She wonders what he’s thinking – wishes, not for the first time, that she knew how to read him.

“Are you okay?” she says, quietly.

Scott pauses. He looks up at her, his eyes dark under the moonlight, and for a long, unblinking moment, his eyes are those of a stranger’s; there’s emotion passing in the depths of them that she can’t place, a current shifting under the surface of a still lake.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice rough and tight. “I’ll be alright. You?”

Her throat tightens. She nods. “I think so.”

He doesn’t smile, but his hand closes around her knee briefly. His palm is warm and soft, his fingers squeezing gently before he lets go and hops down from the porch. The heat of his touch lingers.

“Right,” he says, clearing his throat.  “I should get going. Don’t bother about calling a cab or anything, I’ll be fine. It’s only ten minutes down the road.”

“If you’re sure…”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waves a hand. “Thanks for the company. Thanks for all of it, everything over the last week. It’s meant more to – to the kids than you know. Say happy birthday to your mum for me?”

Tessa shakes her head. “Not if I want to survive this weekend. See you later, Scott.”

“Bye, Tess,” he says, but he lingers, his heels digging into the gravel as he looks up at her. She’s not sure what he wants from her; she doesn’t know what she wants from him either. He just stands there looking at her, nothing afraid about the way he meets her eyes. Whatever he sees, it can’t be bad, because he gives her a tiny smile. “Bye,” he says again, softer, with an air of finality, and this time he turns.

She watches as he walks away, his shoes crunching on the gravel. He brushes his palms along the front of his jeans, flexing the hand that was wrapped around her knee.

Was that the first time he’d touched her? Properly touched her, not just a bump on the shoulder or an accidental brush of hands, but deliberately, with intent. It feels absurd to be itemising every interaction between them like a teenager with a crush – _Scott held the door to the rink open for me today_ – but they’ve always relied on physical touch. Wherever words failed them, a simple squeeze of the hand would do. Sometimes they didn’t even need to speak; a look would be enough.

Too many times this week, she’s caught herself about to reach out to squeeze his shoulder or smooth a hand across his back. It’s worse when she’s nervous – their old grounding techniques flashing into her head on impulse. He’s _here,_ he’s close enough that she can reach out and touch him – but she’s not allowed. It’s no wonder that goosebumps still prickle across her skin from where he touched her, the shape of his fingers seared into her.

Across an ocean, they had nothing except words – and then they had silence. Now, they have a start. In the small, quiet moments – Scott singing in the car; Scott’s hand wrapped around her knee; Scott standing and watching, his smile tinged by moonlight – it doesn’t seem quite so impossible that they might make it to answering the questions that need to be asked. Perhaps not now, or the next week, or the next month, but there’s a path ahead for them, unfolding with each step. All they have to do is follow it home.


	6. Chapter 6

Time passes quickly over the next few months, as it is wont to do when one takes on the responsibility of running a start-up designer outlet in the fashion capital of the world. Whole weeks seem to pass in the time it takes Tessa to blink, the green summer leaves of the trees outside her apartment turning to a rich, russet orange. Before long, it’s deep enough into autumn that she barely sees the sun; it’s dark when she bundles into her car in the morning, and dark when she leaves the office at the end of the day. She wraps herself up in three separate layers for her drive to the rink. In the car park, she sits and shivers, warming her hands around her Thermos of coffee until her bones have thawed long enough to make the dash indoors.

Sometimes she opens her phone to her message history with Scott (still empty, aside from their initial texts and a cheery ‘safe travels’ before her flight back from London). Once or twice she even composes a message with frozen, fumbling fingers – ‘ _Hey Scott, just wondering how Natalie and Gabriel are getting on? Hope the choreography isn’t driving you up the wall yet! Haven’t heard from you in a while, I hope everything is okay._ ’ – but she chucks her phone onto the seat next to her before she can hit send.

They’re both busy people, she reasons. There’s no reason to make his silence into something more than it is.

A more pressing concern is Rose.

She’s going to tell her, she swears. She’s going to tell her everything – about the visits to Montreal, about the daily practices in the rink before work, about Scott and as much of their history together as she can bear to recount. It’s not for lack of trying; it’s just that the moment is never quite right.

Well, that along with the fact that Rose has never been the most _tactful_ person. There’s a reason Tessa handles most of the talking in meetings; inspirational and ebullient her friend may be, she lacks a certain delicateness of conversation. Tessa has dated exactly four men since arriving in Paris, and Rose ripped them all to shreds within hours of hearing about them, let alone meeting them. Tessa is hardly jumping at the chance to hand her twenty-seven years’ worth of ammunition.

She and Rose grab Sunday brunch together the week after she returns from Montreal, and she thinks about telling her then. They’re regulars at this particular cafe, the sweetest little place on the corner of Tessa’s street. Like most Sundays, the morning comes down to the two of them and a pile of pastries bigger than Tessa’s head. Sunlight streams in through the cafe windows, and Rose is grinning at her, daring her to bite into the last pain au chocolat, and the words are on the tip of her tongue  - but then she inhales a crumb and spends the next five minutes doubled over, spluttering into her coffee.

By the time she plucks up the courage to try again, it’s mid-September and the frost is beginning to creep across the window panes of her apartment. She and Rose are curled up on the couch, their yearly Suits marathon in progress. It’s the third time they’ve watched the series through; neither of them needs to pay attention to know what’s going on. Rose has adopted her usual position for nights at Tessa’s – sprawled out across the sofa with every single cushion stuffed behind her, legs slung across Tessa’s lap.

“I hate this shit,” Rose grumbles at the television screen. “Everyone knows that Harvey and Donna are perfect for each other but they still make us wait ten fucking seasons for the pay-off. I mean, I love it, but I hate it. What’s the point?”

She roots around for the bucket of popcorn on the floor next to the sofa, and punctuates her sentence by shoving a handful of popcorn into her mouth with a sour look. Tessa tries not to flinch. The popcorn is a concession made only for Rose. No other human being on the planet would live longer than thirty seconds if they attempted such a thing in Tessa’s apartment.

“Real life is tricky,” Tessa says, shrugging in a way that she hopes is nonchalant. “Sometimes people just can’t make it work. Or they can’t make it work the way that everyone wants.”

“Yeah, but still,” Rose says. “They could have been boning for at _least_ a couple of years. And we know the sex is good when they finally get around to it. What a waste.”

“It’s not always that easy.”

From her throne of cushions, Rose raises an eyebrow. “Hmm. It sounds like you’ve really thought a lot about Harvey and Donna’s will-they won’t-they relationship. A little _too_ much, one might say. Something on your mind there, Tess?”

Tessa pauses. What’s the harm in telling Rose now? She probably won’t get a better opportunity than this. Rose is never as chilled out as when she’s lounging around Tessa’s apartment like she owns the place. It’s a Friday night, so if it all goes terribly, they at least have the weekend to try and patch things up before work on Monday. Ignoring the way her stomach churns at the prospect, she’s golden.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the television playing in the background - the typical monologue to save the day at the eleventh hour. Tessa has never wished more acutely that her life had a nearly-plotted season arc. A writer’s room of fifteen would know the right words to use; Tessa has her anxiety and a gnawing eagerness to please.

“Rose,” she starts, “I-”

There’s a noise that sounds suspiciously like the scattering of a few hundred pieces of popcorn across Tessa’s living room floor.

“Fuck, shit, sorry,” Rose exclaims, freezing in her attempt to swing her legs down from the sofa.

By the time Tessa has fetched a dustpan and brush from the kitchen, and the two of them have gone through the painstaking process of ensuring every rogue piece of popcorn is dispatched to the trash, Rose has completely abandoned her previous train of thought. Tessa is not inclined to remind her.

That puts an end to attempt number two.  
  


* * *

  
It’s unseasonably warm the day she finally tells Rose. The whole week is stifling, in fact; Tessa has to throw open every single window in her apartment just to get a bearable night’s sleep. Paris is not a city built for mid-autumn heatwaves. All of the east-facing balconies and triple-glazed windows are perfect for long winters - not so much for humidity that clings like a second skin. Tessa finds herself dreaming of air conditioning, makes up any excuse she can think of to walk to the supermarket and stand in the freezer aisle. The one place in Paris that _does_ have AC is the local cinema - which is why, when Rose insists they take the evening off to watch some generic movie musical she’s been talking about for weeks, Tessa doesn’t protest. Melting into a puddle of her own sweat might be preferable to the idea of confronting Rose, but it’s not nearly as constructive.

On their way back home afterwards, they take their time, ambling along the pavement. The heat of the day has mellowed into a tolerable warmth, a breath of wind stirring the leaves of the trees above. With the breeze comes people - the main avenues are crowded with those making the most of the brief respite. Neither of them fancy elbowing their way through crowds, so they decide to take the long way home via the side streets; the little residential alleyways are empty and quiet, and it’s a nice enough evening for a stroll.

They walk at a steady pace, heels keeping time on the pavement. Rose’s arm loops through Tessa’s. The silence is comfortable; only the occasional wail of a police siren in the distance breaks the peace. Tessa allows her thoughts to tick over, drifting slowly towards the things she knows need to be said. Three points of conversation, she reminds herself: choreography in Montreal, skating in Paris, Scott. Taken alone, those things aren’t so difficult to admit.

“Rose,” she says. “I need to tell you something.”

The steadiness of her own voice surprises her. Her hands aren’t trembling either; one rests on Rose’s arm, gentle and warm. She focuses on that point of connection, draws strength from it.

“You remember that weekend in summer when I got sick? And the week after that, when I went back home for my Mum’s birthday?”

Slowly, Rose nods, her brow furrowing as she registers the gravity in Tessa’s voice. Tessa draws in a breath, steeling herself. She’s faced down things far harder than this; pain so intense it was unthinkable, the indignity of daily weigh-ins and a tape measure around her waist. She can handle a simple conversation.

“I wasn’t being entirely honest with you,” she says. “Both those times I was in Montreal, choreographing for one of Scott’s teams. He got in touch with me a few months ago to ask if I’d be willing to give it a try. I only said I’d see how it went, except then it went...really well. Being on the ice again is _incredible_ , Rose, and working with the team, with Natalie and Gabriel and Scott, is just so rewarding. It had been so long, I’d forgotten what it was like. I mean, I knew I missed it but I never realised how _much_ until I was actually there. Everything came together so naturally, I wish you could have seen it. They’re such talented skaters, watching them bring my choreography to life was a true honour. The whole experience was more than I could ever have hoped, seeing Scott again, and…”

Tessa’s train of thought doesn’t grind to a halt so much as it slams on the emergency brakes before it can careen headfirst off a cliff.

“-and I’m supposed to be apologising,” she corrects, and takes a moment to collect herself before speaking again. “Right. I’m sorry, Rose, I should have told you months ago. There’s no excuse. I was too scared to tell you the truth, and that’s on me. I’m an idiot and a terrible friend, and you deserve to be treated better than that.”

She looks up to meet Rose’s eyes, bracing herself for the disappointment she expects to see there - but there’s none of it. Rose looks back at her with faint amusement, like she’s in on a private joke. It throws Tessa for a loop.

“You are both an idiot and a terrible friend, Tess,” Rose nods, patting her arm. “And you’re also _incredibly_ unobservant sometimes. I literally tripped over your skate bag in the hallway of your apartment last week. Ever since July you’ve started taking three shots of espresso in your coffee rather than two, and those dark circles do _not_ lie.”

Tessa’s jaw drops. “What?”

“Tess,” Rose says, slowly, like she’s explaining something of great importance to a small child. “I’ve known for months. About your trips to Montreal, about the fact that you skate before work, about all of it. Do you think I’m _that_ much of an idiot? It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.”

“But - Montreal?” Tessa protests. “How could you know about that too?”

Rolling her eyes, Rose digs around in her jacket pocket and pulls out her phone. For a moment or two, she taps away in silence, her screen glowing bright in the gathering gloom of the evening. Then, she thrusts the phone towards Tessa. Tessa squints at it. Rose has pulled up a news article from The Globe and Mail; the headline reads ‘Olympic ice dance hopefuls announce collaboration with Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’. A scrolling counter at the top of the page shows an eye-watering number of comments and shares.

“Oh,” Tessa says, in a small voice. “Right.”

Rose gives her a sympathetic smile. “Two and two. Also, Google Alerts. Very handy for keeping on top of online chatter about a new collection - or, if you happen to be a Canadian household name, the rumour mill.”

Tessa sighs, rubbing a hand across her face. It’s as if all the tension drains from her body at once. Her legs feel like jelly underneath her; her muscles are so heavy and slow she can barely move them. If it wasn’t for Rose’s arm still looped through hers, she’s not sure she would still be standing.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, again.

“Relax, jeez,” Rose laughs. “Did you think I was going to bite your head off or what? You’ve got a nice waxy sheen going. Do you want to sit down for a bit? I don't think I'll be able to drag you all the way home if you faint on me.”

Tessa nods. “That might be a good idea.”

Carefully, they make their way over to a bench at the side of the road. The street they’ve found themselves in is blessedly empty, backing onto rows of terraced houses that fold up against one another like the pages of a book. Curtains are drawn across all the windows, but traces of light flicker through the slight gaps, dancing across the uneven paving stones. Tessa sits quietly, staring out into the night. There’s a balancing point somewhere between truth and kindness, she thinks, and she never learned it very well. It was safer to be kind.

Rose leans her head against Tessa’s shoulder. “Tessa,” she says, a strange tilt to her voice. “I’m going to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me. Is your heart still in this? You used to live for our work, even when we were pulling sixty-hour weeks and sleeping at the office, and now...I don’t know. Sometimes I swear it’s like you’re not even in the room with me. Is everything okay?”

There’s a reflex response to that question, one that Tessa has repeated so many times it comes to her without thinking: I’m fine, it’s nothing, I’ll manage. She used it like a mantra, clung to the words to pull her through the years when her legs gave out on her. It’s what she would tell herself, sitting in the car, waiting for her mother to return with her grocery shopping because she couldn’t get to the store without feeling like her bones were trying to push up out of her skin, like they were as sick as she was of living in her body. Suck it up, push through, it’s all okay. Sometimes she even believed what she was telling herself.

Training herself out of that mindset is a slow and gradual process. But really, she thinks – when it comes down to it, the only thing that matters is that she promised Rose the truth.

“Honestly?” she says. “I don’t know. Sometimes I’m fine. Sometimes not. It comes and goes.”

“And skating, that helps?”

“Yes. At least, I think so. It’s easier to forget about everything when I’m skating.”

“Okay,” Rose says, simply. “That’s all that matters then.”

Tessa’s throat tightens. She wraps her hand around Rose’s, tucking their fingers together on the bench.

“I don’t deserve you,” she says.

“Sure you do. You’re a gem, Tess. You just get so caught up in your own head that sometimes you forget that.” Rose pulls away from Tessa to grin at her. “ _Now,”_ she says, and her eyes gleam in the lamplight. “What’s the deal with you and Moir? What happened when you went to visit, what was he like? Three years is a long time. Is he any different - ooh, _wait_ , is he a silver fox now?”

Tessa gives a short cough of laughter.  “He’s only thirty-six, Rose. Scott was...Scott. He seemed pleased with my work, at the very least.”

“I’ll bet he was,” Rose says, raising her eyebrows.

Tessa whacks her gently on the arm. “Don’t, it’s not like that.”

“If you say so,” Rose says, sounding not in the least convinced. “But I’ve seen the videos of you two performing Carmen. Unless you lived like monks for your entire competitive career, there had to have been something going on there.”

“Ten years ago, maybe,” Tessa says. “Now there’s just a lot of baggage.”

“Baggage isn’t always a bad thing.”

Tessa laughs, the sound ringing clear in the night. “Twenty-seven years’ worth of baggage? You want to give it a go?”

“For the hot childhood friend-to-lover with the body of a Greek god? Maybe. For the rest of your sorry adventures in the Parisian dating scene?” Rose screws up her nose. “Thanks, but no thanks, Tess. I wouldn’t wish your luck with men on anybody. Anyway, what happened at the end of the trip? Was he there at the airport to see you off? Did you share a long, lingering goodbye?” she says, and waggles her eyebrows in a suggestive manner.

Tessa rolls her eyes. “Stop,” she says, turning away. Her cheeks feel strangely warm - is she _blushing_? She doesn’t dare raise a hand to check, Rose would never let her live it down. “I’m not going to look at you any more.”

“As long as you spill the gossip, Tess, you can look wherever you want,” Rose says, in a sing-song voice.

“There’s nothing to spill!” Tessa protests. “Nothing happened! I was planning on going back to London for the weekend to celebrate my mum’s birthday, but my flight was cancelled. Scott was kind enough to volunteer to drive me there instead. That’s all there is to tell you.”

Rose is quiet for a moment, thinking. Tessa doesn’t like it one bit.

“And how far exactly is it from Montreal to London?” Rose says, carefully.

“Um…” Tessa hesitates, wincing. “Seven hours’ drive, maybe?”

Rose rips her hand out from under Tessa’s. Startled, Tessa looks back, into the suddenly incensed face of her friend. Even in the dim light, it’s impossible to mistake the sheer disbelief on Rose’s face. “Hopeless. You’re fucking _hopeless_ ,” Rose says, shaking her head.

Tessa glances nervously up and down the street. “Would you keep your voice down, please?”

“I can’t help it! You have the gall to tell me ‘it’s not like that’ and now you say he drove you on a full cross-country road trip to get you home safe? Should he fly you by fucking private jet next time to make things more obvious? You are _unbelievable_ , Tessa, both of you.”

“He only did it so I’d-“

Rose holds up a hand. “Don’t speak to me,” she says. “You need to hear this. A man who drives seven hours so that you can get home is a man who is definitely very _interested_ , Tessa, no matter your sordid past – no, don’t look at me like that. I don’t care about the skeletons in your closet. You two need to sit down and have a proper adult conversation, and stop lying to each other about the fact that you’re both in this for reasons other than the betterment of ice dancing and humanity.”

“I don’t-”

“Nope. No, no. Nobody goes through that many years together without deserving the truth. You’ve made this much effort to reach out to each other. Get your shit together. Finish the job.”

Tessa sits in stunned silence. Of all the day’s revelations, she wasn’t prepared for  _this_ one to be the most controversial.

“Good,” Rose says, her voice softening. She leans her head to rest once more on Tessa’s shoulder. “Glad you agree. Good chat.”

“Right,” Tessa echoes, faintly. “Good chat.”  
  


* * *

_  
FROM: _ _tessavirtue89@gmail.com_ [ _  
_ ](mailto:tessavirtue89@gmail.com) _TO:_ _scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_

_Hi Scott,_

_Apologies in advance if this email is more scattered and incoherent than usual, it’s been non-stop over here for the past couple of months. I barely have time to think, let alone sit down and compose an email that makes any kind of sense. I’m guessing things are equally hectic on your end, given the radio silence – but hey, at least we’re as bad as each other._

_I wanted to apologise for how we left things last time. I shouldn’t have pushed you to answer questions that you weren’t comfortable with. I had no right to it, and I’m sorry. I’m sure it was hardly what you wanted to deal with after a seven-hour drive. I’d call to tell you in person but that terrifies me more than typing out this email. Isn’t that ridiculous? All those years we spent learning how to communicate effectively, and I can’t even pick up the phone and speak to you like a normal human being._

_I hope you’re doing well, and Natalie and Gabriel too. I hear they’re sweeping the Grand Prix, which reassures me both that their talent is being recognised, and that my choreography didn’t sink their chances for the season. That’s about as much as I hoped for! I haven’t plucked up the courage to watch any footage yet, but I’m glad the program seems to be getting the results the team wanted. Hopefully Natalie and Gabriel find performing every bit as fulfilling as winning. Process over product, remember that motto?_

_Isn't it funny how things come back to you? I feel like it happens more and more the older you get. I was buying groceries the other day (at this tiny little boutique store round the corner from my apartment, you’d find it insufferable), and I don’t know why it struck me, but suddenly all I could remember was that disastrous time you tried to use the oven in my kitchen. It was back when we were still living in the same apartment building in Montreal, your oven must have been broken or something. You made up some excuse for it, anyway. You hopped down five flights of stairs to my apartment with this massive tray of salmon (the glory days when grilled salmon and watercress was all we ate for five nights in a row, ever miss those?) and shoved it in the oven. We must have decided to watch a movie after that. Next thing you know, there’s this weird burning smell and a tidal wave of smoke coming from the kitchen. The salmon is little more than charcoal when we pull it out of the oven, fire alarm is wailing, and we spend the next twenty minutes wafting smoke out of windows and hoping that the terms of lease cover kitchen fires._

_Turns out that, three months after moving in, it had never occurred to me to remove the plastic wrapping from the oven. We ended up with sticky plastic goop covering the entire bottom shelf of the oven and an hour spent inhaling noxious chemical fumes. I genuinely thought that I might have scuppered our Olympic dreams by giving us both chemical poisoning._

_Sleep-deprived me found that memory absolutely hysterical. So, if you need any indication as to how my life is going, I am now the crazy woman in the grocery store, laughing to her avocados. Sums it up pretty perfectly._

_Tessa_

\------------

_FROM:_ _scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_ [ _  
_ ](mailto:scott.moir@cpagadbois.com) _TO:_ _tessavirtue89@gmail.com_

_Hey Tess,_

_It’s really great to hear from you! Sorry it took me so long to write back, we’re deep in battle preparations for the Grand Prix Final. Don’t even worry about the stuff you said, I’m pretty sure both of us were way too tired to be thinking straight. Besides, I was being kind of a dick about it too. Guess I forget that things aren’t the way they used to be, you know? It’s really easy to slip straight back to being twenty-two when it’s just you and me, especially back home. I hope your mum liked the birthday gift (last minute and all, but I had to come up with something)! Is it too obvious that I’m trying to bribe my way back into her good books?_

_Speaking of bribery, Nat and Gabe are winning everything (I’m kidding, I’m kidding). We even had a full Gadbois sweep at the second GP in Finland. That was a pretty sweet moment – you should have seen Patch at the boards for the medal ceremony, his face was like stone. Emotional overload. I took a picture for Marie and she hung it up on the office wall for everyone to make fun of. Who says technology never gave us anything, eh?_

_Your choreography, by the way, is getting rave reviews from the judges. I even saw You-Know-Who applauding at the end of Natalie and Gabriel’s free at Finland – and yes, I’m as surprised as you are that she’s still around. I thought for sure her pact with the devil would have expired by now. Anyway, now I can tell everyone that your choreography is genius and they won’t just think I’m hopelessly biased._

_As for The Salmon Incident: can confirm that yes, my oven was GENUINELY broken, no, I do not miss eating fish for dinner every single day, and yes, I remember us almost burning down your apartment with crystal clarity. Who had to go around knocking on doors to apologise to every single person in the building? This guy. I’ve never suffered through so many death stares in my life – and I skated with you._

_Hope you and your groceries are living life to the fullest. Some sleep might be a good idea, I’ve heard. No use working yourself to the bone – not even for Fashion Week (see, I do know something about what goes on in Paris)._

_Scott_

\------------

_FROM:_ _tessavirtue89@gmail.com_ [ _  
_ ](mailto:tessavirtue89@gmail.com) _TO:_ _scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_

_My Mum adored the gift, thank you so much! Well, maybe ‘adored’ is not the right word. She didn’t toss it straight into the trash or frown at the mention of your name like she has done for the past…forever, so progress is being made. I will admit, when I saw the little parcel you slipped into my bag, I considered whether it was worth the pain of giving it to her, but it all turned out okay in the end. Besides, she would likely disown me if she learned that I stopped you from giving her nice things. I’ll just refrain from telling her that it’s hush money and you can owe me one._

_I can’t tell you how glad I am that the program is working well for everyone. Working at Gadbois was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I almost forgot I could do things like that anymore – those creative muscles definitely had a few layers of rust to shake off! The only problem is, now that I’ve started I can’t stop. I’m at the rink practically every morning before work, and after when I can get the time. If I wasn’t single-handedly keeping the entire facility open before, I definitely am now. Just when I need to settle down and channel all that creative energy into designing – like I should have been doing for the past three months – my brain has decided that no, it would much rather be ice dancing._

_That should give you some indication as to how my actual work is going, which is to say…not. Rose and I recently hired a new employee to help out with admin, which has been a godsend. I won’t bore you with all the details, but her name is Jaquelyn, she’s a star, and I am shamefully unenthusiastic about my own business right now. I feel like a guilty parent._

_Tess_

_PS. Please don’t tell me that Natalie and Gabriel are going head-to-head with one of Marina’s teams. I think that would be too much for me to bear._

_PPS. If you feel like sending me updates on how they’re doing more often than every four months, that wouldn’t go amiss._

\------------

_FROM:_ _scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_ [ _  
_ ](mailto:scott.moir@cpagadbois.com) _TO:_ _tessavirtue89@gmail.com_

_Tess,_

_It sounds like you’re burnt out. You’ve been going at the fashion thing for how many years now, three? Four? That’s enough to drain anyone, especially given how hard you work. Have you taken a single holiday since moving to Paris? Maybe skating is the break you need – give your creative batteries some time to recharge by doing something completely different._

_I know I’m not exactly the most knowledgeable guy around when it comes to running a business, but you’re obviously making enough money to hire more people. Cut yourself some slack. Being uninspired is no one’s fault. Beating yourself up about it won’t change anything. Plus, I bet you’re producing killer choreography! I’ll have to get you involved with a few other teams at Gadbois, share that talent around!_

_I don’t know if you’ve been keeping tabs on the season beyond Natalie and Gabriel’s results, but this year it just so happens that the Grand Prix Final is in Paris. If you fancied coming out (on a purely unofficial basis, of course), I know the kids would love to see you. We could have a quick catch up – exploit your local knowledge on the places to avoid for dinner, try not to horrify you with how we’ve bastardised your choreography (JOKING, I’m joking...). Not to guilt trip you or anything but Natalie’s been asking after you constantly ever since you left. Gabriel doesn’t say anything, but he always gets this hopeful puppy-dog look in his eyes – you know the one that half the junior boys (and girls) used to give you. You’ve got a team of massive admirers over here, Tess._

_Hope to see you soon._

_Scott_

_PS. God, no. Marina’s got her hands full with a few lower-level teams. Nat and Gabe’s real rivals – well, you’ll meet them at the Final. If you decide to come._

_PPS. You got it, boss. I won’t tell Nat and Gabe that you’ve got a soft spot for them, and you won’t tell your mum that I think she’s a dragon lady ready to eat me if I don’t supply her with treasure._

\------------

_FROM:_ _tessavirtue89@gmail.com_ [ _  
_ ](mailto:tessavirtue89@gmail.com) _TO:_ _scott.moir@cpagadbois.com_

_Maybe you’re right. Aside from the time I spent visiting you, I can’t remember the last time I took a day off. It just feels disingenuous that choreography comes so easily, while I can sit in the office for hours and hours with absolutely nothing to show for it. I’m at my wits’ end – I’ve had creative block before but never anything this bad. Nothing seems to make a difference._

_At this point, spending a few days at the Final can hardly make things worse – no guilt-tripping required. I can take you three round some of the Parisian sights, if you like. I never seem to find an excuse to go alone, it’ll be nice to have people to share it with._

_Just shoot me the dates and I’ll be there!_

_Tess_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in posting, life and editing issues kept me very busy for the past few weeks. I had a few comments on the last chapter asking about update schedules, so just wanted to reiterate that I aim to update every Monday. Occasionally that won't be possible (eg. this chapter right here) but I'm trying to stick to weekly updates as much as I can. 
> 
> As always, you can find me over @virtueoso on Tumblr. Thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

Three days. It’s three days until the Grand Prix Final.

How strange to have that countdown in her head again. It used to be a ticking clock that kept her entire life in time, breaking down years and months into crosses on a calendar. How many days did they have left to perfect their key points on the pattern, how many days to fake confidence that never seemed to come? All decisions boiled down to a single day, circled and underlined in red pen. She thought she had left that particular sense of looming dread behind her in retirement, but here she finds it again, nerves jangling like metal in the pit of her stomach. Is this what Scott feels every time his team compete – this taut energy that builds and builds, without the comfort of being able to control what happens? It seems absurd for her to be _this_ nervous about a competition that isn’t even technically hers.

At least her favourite haunting place is as familiar and deserted as always when she arrives early one Thursday morning. She pushes the front door open with a tip of a trainer and steps neatly over the tiling, where it curls away from the floorboards in tiny, grasping fingers.

“Good morning, Tam,” she calls. “Are they ever going to get the floor fixed, or is it going to take a broken ankle and a lawsuit?”

The lanky-haired teen sat behind a chipped wooden desk waves a hand in greeting. “Hey, Tess. Count your lucky stars that the powers that be have their hands full elsewhere, or we’d both be out of a home. Don’t think this place would stand up to much inspection.”

“Pity,” she sighs. “I won’t hold my breath then. Is the rink empty?”

“You know it. One person rang wanting to book for later but I told them we were closed for repairs.”

Tessa’s brow furrows. “Are you sure that won’t get you in trouble? I mean, I’m really grateful, but I don’t want you to lose your job over me. I can pay for private ice if you need."

“Relax,” Tam says, with a wave of his hand. His bony fingers roll in the air, outlined against the empty noticeboard behind him. “No one cares enough to check up on anything that happens here. Hell, sometimes I doubt people realise this place even exists. Suits me just fine. I still get paid. Anyway, you said you had friends coming with you today, right? Thought I’d keep the place clear for you.”

Despite herself, Tessa smiles. “Thanks, Tam. That’s really good of you.”

“I know, I know, I’m a model citizen. Head on in, I’ll wave your friends through when they get here. Who should I be looking out for?”

“A guy named Scott,” Tessa says, shouldering her kit bag. “He’ll have two kids with him, a girl and a boy. You’ll know them when you see them, you won’t be able to shut up two of the three.”

Tam’s eyes light up. “Oh-ho. A gentleman caller?”

Tessa shakes her head firmly. “Don’t you start too,” she says. “And don’t get any ideas when he arrives, either – or I’ll leave you here with only the rats for company. I bet you they wouldn’t make such entertaining conversation.”

“Is he cute?” Tam asks. Tessa marches away from the desk. “Tessa!” comes the call from behind her, between bouts of echoing laughter. “The people need to know! And by ‘people’ I mean me!”

Tessa doesn’t dignify her friend’s heckling with a response. His laughter fades into the distance as she strides down the hallway and swings open the doors to the rink.

Over the months she’s spent here, Tessa has come to appreciate all the idiosyncrasies of the rink she now calls home. It’s nothing like the polished, pristine rinks at Gadbois or the Arctic Edge. This place reminds her far more of the small, well-worn rinks of her childhood, back when she and Scott were hardly a twinkle on Skate Canada’s radar. The stands are rickety and uncomfortable, death-traps in their own right; Tessa wouldn’t trust them to hold up her skate bag let alone her body weight. The roof panel above the left corner of the stands leaks muddy rainwater into a large red bucket. There’s nowhere to hang clothes in the changing room. Tessa has never skated in a rink so ill-equipped with ice so well-maintained.

She sets down her bag in its usual place, tucked under the stands closest to the boards, and pulls on her skates. The ice stretches out in smooth, fresh sheets beyond the barriers. She sits there for a minute, hands on her hips, and breathes in the smell of the place, crisp and cold, clearing her lungs. It may not be perfect, this rink, but the thought of such a place sitting alone and unused, unloved - Tessa has never considered herself sentimental, but it seems too sad a prospect to bear. Even the battered old things of the world deserve to see the sun.

She warms up quickly. Her thighs no longer burn after a few minutes on the ice; the muscles have hardened, her body gradually remembering its old rhythms. The aches and pains come later, but those too are familiar. She makes a few more laps of the rink, pressing down into the ice, getting her knees beneath her. Her skates are beginning to struggle after being hauled so unceremoniously back from their relaxing retirement at the bottom of her cupboard. She’s taped the ankle guards up as tight as they’ll go, but the padding rubs against her ankle; she’ll have to replace them soon.

Muscles loose and ready, she launches into a repeat of yesterday’s choreography. It’s a purposeless thing, borne mainly from her exasperation after another futile day at work, but it makes her feel better for it. She’s learning that she choreographs better when she’s frustrated. Frustration, loneliness, joy - any sort of emotion at all, in fact. As long as there's a feeling there for her to latch onto, she can channel it into something useful. She never was any good at breaking down an element into the precise components that would push it from a plus 2 to a plus 3 GOE, but she could transform a move from jealousy to lovestruck devotion with nothing but the flick of a wrist. 

The second time around, it’s easier to pour her whole body into the choreography. She makes adjustments on the fly, pulling back on the raise of an arm, tilting her chin up to the sky on a twizzle. There’s no sound, nothing but the rasp of her skate blades; the music in her head is the only thing she hears.

That is, until a low, impressed whistle carries across the ice.

She skids to a halt. A sudden burst of nerves pulls low in her stomach, like a hand clamping down on her insides. Slowly, she swivels on her skates - and there, in the doorway of the rink, stands Scott. He's dressed in simple black tracksuit pants, a Team Canada jacket pulled over the top; she recognises the design from the 2022 Olympics. Somehow his fashion sense has improved in her absence - albeit a low bar, considering his previous outfit of choice was hockey shorts and a headband straight out of a 1970s home exercise video. A small, curious face peeks through from under his armpit: Natalie. Another face peers over Scott’s shoulder, pale and tentative.

“Watch out world, Tessa Virtue is back,” Scott proclaims, grinning. “People have no idea what they’re missing out on in here.”

Tessa smiles back at him, tentative. He’d sounded fine in his emails, but it's easy to feign politeness in writing. Scott smiles at her like he’s forgotten their little spat outside her house ever happened – or, if he remembers, it doesn’t matter to him one bit.

“Did you find the rink okay?” she says, as she crosses to the boards and snaps on her skate guards. “I know it’s not exactly the most welcoming place, but it really has a heart of gold. Once you get used to it you’ll never want to skate anywhere else.”

“I love it!” exclaims a high-pitched voice from somewhere behind Scott, before Natalie’s head pops back into view. “Old buildings are so cool. I bet there are a _ton_ of ghost stories you could tell about this place. Plus you get all this to yourself, every day? That’s, like, the dream. Right, Gabe?”

Beside her, Gabriel hesitates. Tessa can practically see his brain working overtime to balance his honest impression of the rink with being polite. His reverence for her and Scott would never allow him to be rude.

“It’s, um – it’s really nice,” he says, with a smile that looks physically painful, like someone took hold of the corners of his mouth and pulled. “Thanks, Tessa.”

“No problem,” Tessa says, amusement creeping into her voice; it’s not enough for the kids to notice, but Scott raises his eyebrows at her. He steps out from the doorway, and his two charges file into the rink behind him.

Natalie wraps Tessa up into a hug as soon as she gets close enough, a wide, beaming smile on her face. Through a faceful of hair, Tessa can’t help but return the smile. “Morning, Natalie,” she says, as the air is slowly squeezed from her lungs by the arms around her. “It’s good to see the time change hasn’t affected you.”

“The flight was _great_ ,” Natalie says. “We got bumped up to business class and I  _swear_  it was like sleeping on a cloud. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fly economy again. I only knew we hit turbulence because Scott was up the whole time and told me about it later.” She drops her arms from around Tessa’s shoulders. “Oh, that’s right! I was going to ask - do you think you and Scott would skate for us before we start? I don’t want to pry or anything, but I thought maybe if you’d had some time to think about it, you might…”

Tessa freezes. “I, um…” she starts, and glances over to Scott. The glimmer of possibility in his eyes makes her stomach lurch – but it fades as quickly as she notices it.

“I think we have bigger fish to fry right now, Nat,” Scott says, smoothing over Tessa's rabbit-in-the-headlights moment with an ease that she's intensely grateful for. “Let’s stick to getting you two ready for competition, yeah? Once the Final is over, maybe then we can talk.”

Natalie pouts. “One day,” she says, and yawns, stretching her arms above her head. “Hey, Scott, where are we going for lunch? I’m hungry.”

As Scott deals with settling Natalie’s dietary concerns, Gabriel shuffles up to Tessa’s side of the rink. He’s bulked up since the last time she saw him, filling out his long-sleeved grey jacket so it no longer hangs loosely like second-hand clothing.

“Morning, Tessa,” he says stiffly, but he holds out a hand. Tessa takes it, smiling. Only Gabriel would approach a coaching session like a board meeting – all he’s missing is a suit and tie. His grip is firm and secure, and he meets her eyes with a small nod. It’s like he’s memorised the textbook on perfect handshake technique.

“It’s lovely to see you again,” Tessa says. “Are you ready to get down to training? Scott tells me that the two of you have made excellent progress with the free dance.”

“Yeah, um, it’s been going well,” Gabriel says. His eyes wander over behind her shoulder, and he frowns. “It’s been good - your choreography, I mean, it’s easier to train when you have great material to work with, but – uh, Tessa? Should he be doing that?”

Tessa turns. In the stands behind them, Scott is attempting to repair a broken seat, fiddling with a small piece of metal that Tessa presumes once belonged to the chair. He frowns, a determined look on his face as he holds it up to the light, turning it over between his fingers, and then shoves it back into the structure. Tessa winces.

“Please don’t make me call an ambulance when you lose a finger messing around with that,” she says.

Scott rummages around for a few moments longer, then stands up. He dusts his hands off on his trousers with a triumphant grin. “Always so cynical, Tess. Maybe I just fixed your seats for you, you don’t know.”

“In the space of two minutes? Don’t blame me if I’m not eager to test that theory.”

“Lucky you’ve got an idiot volunteer, then.”

Before she can protest, he lowers himself down onto the seat. The only real damage if the seat collapsed would be to Scott's pride, she suspects, but she finds herself holding her breath nonetheless, tensing for the fall. Nothing comes. The metal groans quietly, but Scott's repair job seems to hold - for the moment at least. 

“See?” he says. “Perfectly fine.”

Tessa shakes her head and turns away, exhaling. “It’s your funeral. I’ve given you the appropriate disclaimer and can no longer be held liable for any injury as a result.”

“This place just needs a little bit of TLC. Right, guys?”

Natalie and Gabriel, who have wisely elected to lace up their skates on the floor by the edge of the rink, look up simultaneously.

“I’m not testing your seats for you,” Natalie tells him. “I’ve seen Final Destination. I plan to live a long and healthy life and die in my own bed, not being crushed to death by some dodgy chairs.”  

Scott hops his way down the stands. “Nobody is dying today,” he says. “We’ve got too much work to do. Now, come on, hurry up with those laces. Tessa’s kindly invited us to use her rink, we need to repay that kindness with some proper work. Time to show off how good her choreography looks now.” He shoots Tessa a grin, but she’s not paying attention; she’s preoccupied with watching Gabriel as he finishes lacing up his skates.

There's a hesitant look on Gabriel's face as he glances about, his hands tucked inside his jacket sleeves. Tessa wonders if he ruins all his jacket cuffs like she used to, picking stray threads out of the fabric; she wonders if he's developed the same nervous habits that stick with a person long after the stress of competition has died away. 

She steps towards the two of them. “I know this place doesn’t look like much,” she says. “And believe me, I had the same reservations as you both when I first started skating here – but honestly, once you get going it’ll be fine. The ice is perfect. That’s the most important thing. Think of everything else as an extra challenge. You need to be able to block out your surroundings when you compete. If someone in the audience yells something or a person falls over in the stands, do you want that to cost you a medal? This is how you get an edge over your competition. You push yourself to skate in places that might not be ideal so that when you get to the real thing, there’s nothing that you’re not prepared for.”

Gabriel looks down at his hands, nodding slowly.

“Tessa’s right,” Natalie says, jumping to her feet. “We just have to reframe it as a challenge. It’ll be good for us.”

“Tessa’s _always_ right,” Scott calls, as he wanders over to join them. “First thing you learn when you skate with her. Whatever you think you’re doing, if Tessa’s not doing it too then you’re probably wrong.”

“Only _probably_ ,” Tessa says. She gestures for the assembled party to take the ice. “Now, if you’d like to step this way…”

Over the tops of Natalie and Gabriel’s heads, Scott shoots her a smile, joining the end of the line shuffling onto the ice. He stops as he passes Tessa and holds his hand out for a quick fistbump. Tessa responds without even thinking, raising her hand and knocking it against his.

“Go team,” he whispers, grinning at her.  

“I didn’t do anything,” Tessa whispers back, but she’s grinning too as she steps onto the ice behind him.  
  


* * *

  
Standing at the boards during competition, it turns out, is far worse and far better than anything Tessa could have imagined.

She brings the whole experience entirely upon herself. There’s a seat in the stands ready for her, but when it comes down to it she can’t face the thought of sitting alone in the audience while Natalie and Gabriel and Scott fight for the gold medal. Scott swings her an access pass, and she tries as hard as possible not to get in anyone’s way backstage.

Watching someone else’s competitive process is a curious experience. It feels strangely personal, sitting next to Scott in a back hallway, watching Natalie and Gabriel run through the motions of their programs – like she’s intruding upon a private moment. There’s a reverent sort of hush, interspersed with the faint sounds of competition drifting through the walls. Natalie and Gabriel are markedly different; there’s no messing around, no giggling. They practice lift entries, their trainers squeaking on the linoleum floor. Gabriel huffs a breath as he pushes Natalie up onto his shoulders, his lips set in a determined line.

“Good job, guys,” Scott says, clapping his hands together. Tessa watches Scott’s hands, the way his fingers interlock as soon as he brings them together, his thumb rubbing over his forefinger. The muscles are tense and tight; she can see the veins ridged under his skin, mapping the expanse.

“Feels strange not to be the one with skates on,” she says quietly, her eyes flicking up to watch Natalie and Gabriel. “Like I’m in a memory, but remembering it all wrong.”

Scott leans forward, propping his hands on his knees. “Yeah,” he says. “That doesn’t go away. Not yet, anyway.”

His fingers drum against his jeans endlessly, never settling on a constant rhythm. It sets her on edge – the jangling, shifting energy that he can’t seem to control. Her own heart feels like it’s about to beat straight out of her chest, but she doesn’t let that show – why can’t he get a grip on his nerves? Dealing with pre-competition nerves used to be a precise science for the both of them. She externalises, Scott internalises. Unable to balance the nerves between them, they’re all out of sorts.

It’s the first time she thinks about taking his hand.

She thinks about it again, when they’re standing at the boards together, out in the open of the arena. Natalie and Gabriel are halfway through their rhythm dance, and Tessa tracks their every move like it’s the last one they’ll ever make. She’s powerless. There’s nothing she can do except watch and wait, for the minutes that seem to stretch to hours, to days. All she has is hope – that they don’t make a mistake, that the judges score them fairly, that they’re happy with their performance regardless. Is this what her mother felt like every time she watched her skate, what Marie-France and Patrice and Marina and Igor went through with every competition?

The pressure is almost unbearable.

Scott’s knuckles are white around the top of the boards next to her. She should take his hand, she thinks. She should fasten her hand over his, feel his skin warm under her fingertips. She doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s simply that the world has always felt easier to manage with Scott’s hand in hers.

Natalie and Gabriel win – and not just by one point or two, they win easily. Their Japanese rivals surge ahead in the rhythm but falter in the free, losing valuable points for a fall. It’s clear who the winners are before the scores are even in. Somehow she gets dragged into the Kiss and Cry, with her mascara smudged and her hair probably a mess, and her mother would _kill_ her for appearing on camera like this, but there’s no time to worry. Scott punches the air next to her, grinning from ear to ear as the announcer confirms the victory. Natalie and Gabriel hug each other tightly, then pull Scott in to join them – and before Tessa can blink, Natalie tugs her forwards to complete the circle. There’s an arm looped around her waist, and someone is laughing into her ear, warm breath on her cheek, a forehead pressed against hers. She can’t see who it is, but she doesn’t need to.

By the time Natalie and Gabriel take to the ice to accept their medals, Tessa has Scott’s Team Canada jacket slung over her shoulders. Scott hops from one foot to the other, brimming with pride. He hoots and cheers the whole way through the ceremony, so loudly that Gabriel shoots him a self-conscious smile in-between shaking hands with the referee and the technical controller.  

Tessa digs her elbow into Scott’s side. “Stop embarrassing them,” she whispers, smiling.

Scott grins down at her. "Where's the fun in that, Tess?" he says, as he cups his hands around his mouth and leans forward over the boards to cheer even louder.

She half-hopes the Canadian anthem will quieten him down – but no, Scott decides that it’s his patriotic duty to make up for the largely French audience and yell the words to 'O Canada' as loud as humanly possible. The volunteers around him titter, hiding smiles behind their hands. Scott only sings even louder. He closes his eyes, tipping his head back with a grin. What the hell, Tessa thinks; at least his yelling will drown out hers.

It takes him a moment to clock that he’s not singing alone any more. He looks down at her with a delighted smile, his eyes widening, and it’s as though the years roll back. It’s seven years ago and they’re grinning at each other like fools on the top step of the podium in the Medals Plaza at Pyeongchang, the Canadian flag rising like a beacon in front of them. Scott is tuneless, yelling out the words at the top of his lungs, but she doesn’t care. His smile is so bright, blinding, and she can’t remember ever being this happy in her entire life.

Her fingers stretch out to find his, to take his hand – but the illusion cracks. The material under her fingertips isn’t the woollen mittens of the Canadian Olympic uniform: it’s bare skin, warm and soft, and it’s not 2018, and they’re not Olympic champions any more, and they don’t do things like holding hands. Her face flushes. She stumbles over the words of the anthem, but before she can snatch her hand away, Scott’s hand slips into hers. He doesn’t say anything – his attention remains fixed on Natalie and Gabriel – but his fingers curl around hers, secure and solid, and he squeezes her hand.

Tessa finds her place in the anthem and starts again.  
  
_“O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.”_  
  


* * *

  
Outside the window of the small café, the city of Paris drips like a ruined watercolour painting. Rain spatters to the ground, tumbling from overflowing gutters and running in tiny streams down the tiled roofs of the rows of picture-perfect terraced houses. The only people foolish enough to still be outside hurry along the cobbled street, kicking up sprays of water as they hold umbrellas (or, the lesser prepared, coats) over their heads.

Indoors, Natalie and Gabriel dig into their post-competition meals with relish.

“Does it always rain here like the world’s ending?” Natalie mumbles, through a mouthful of ham salad. Her hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail – or at least, she’s tried. Half of it hangs down in limp curls by her ears. Tessa’s not going to ask; Gabriel looks similarly worse for wear. His clothes are smart and his hair has been neatly combed, but his eyes are ringed with dark circles.

Tessa smiles apologetically. “I’ve never seen it this bad before, especially not this late in the year. I’m afraid the sightseeing might have to wait until next time.”

Natalie’s eyes gleam. “So there’s going to be a next time?”

“We’ll see,” Tessa says. “If you’re in the area, it seems silly not to. Although I _am_ a little bit disappointed that despite my best efforts, the haunted rink didn’t scare you off.”

“You mean despite the attempt on my life,” Scott interjects, with a raised eyebrow and a pious look on his face.

Scott, to his credit, is bright-eyed and cheerful as ever. It appears that whatever his charges got up to last night, he remained wisely ignorant of it. That, or he’s as annoyingly good as he used to be at shaking off a hangover.

Tessa rolls her eyes. “If you insist on sitting on things I told you were going to break, you can’t be surprised when they _do_ actually break. That’s not how advance warning works.”

“I get no sympathy anywhere,” Scott says, shaking his head. “You hear that, Gabe? No sympathy.”

Gabriel shrugs. “I think Tessa’s the one who deserves sympathy for putting up with you for so many years,” he says, in his typical deadpan. Natalie begins to laugh, then tries to cover it up by cramming a forkful of salad into her mouth.

“Unbelievable…” Scott mutters.

Tessa tilts her head towards him, flashing a sweetly smug smile. In response, Scott knocks his knee against hers under the table.

“Behave,” she tells him.

The look she gets in return is positively criminal.

When she drags her gaze back to the pair sat across the table from them, there are two very different responses. Gabriel flushes a deep red and glances away. Natalie leverages them both with a discerning stare. Tessa doesn't dare meet Scott's eyes; she can already feel her face beginning to warm. She doesn't know which is worse - the thought that they might have just scarred Gabriel for life, or that Natalie has the uncomfortable ability to make Tessa feel like she's sitting across from her own mother. 

“So,” she says breezily, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Did you want to do anything else today? There are plenty of things we can do that don’t involve being out in the rain. Paris has museums, art galleries, churches, whatever you’re interested in. We could even go shopping if you want, there’s the loveliest row of stores a few minutes’ walk from here-“

“Please don’t encourage her,” Scott mutters, under his breath, and Tessa shoots him a glare.

Across the table, Natalie and Gabriel exchange glances.

“I’d love to, Tessa, really,” Natalie says, “but I just don’t think I’m up to much today…”

“Yeah, I’m pretty tired,” Gabriel chimes in. “Maybe it’d be best if me and Nat took it easy for the day. We’re not the best company when we’re tired and grumpy, Scott can tell you that.”

Natalie nods quickly, pushing back her chair and getting to her feet. “Exactly. We’ll go back to the hotel and take a nap. Don’t worry about us. Come on, Gabe, let’s go.”

“You’ve barely touched your meal, are you sure?” Tessa says, eyebrows raised.

“Uh-huh. Don’t even stress. We’ll get a cab back and see you later for dinner. It’s cool.”

“Bye,” Gabriel says, fluttering a hand limply before Natalie all but drags him out of the café.

Tessa and Scott suddenly find themselves sitting alone at a table overlooking a stormy Parisian street, one half-eaten ham salad, a lukewarm burger and a few sorry-looking chips sat opposite them.

“I wonder if they thought that was subtle,” Tessa muses, after a minute of silence.

Scott leans back in his chair, the wood creaking under his weight. He sighs heavily. “I can only imagine.”

“Well, then…” Tessa says, with a tentative glance towards Scott. “It seems a shame to waste a day. Do _you_ want to go anywhere?”

Scott grins. “Sure. Introduce me to Paris. Show me what you love most about the city. I want to see your world.”

“My entire world? That’s a tall order.”

“Ahh, well, I trust you to deliver.”

Tessa smiles, and Scott smiles back, and right now they’re probably radiating that kind of disgustingly sappy energy that Tessa can’t stand when she sees it on the faces of strangers on the street, but she can’t bring herself to care.

“Alright then,” she says. “The one thing I love the most about Paris. I hope you brought a raincoat.”


	8. Chapter 8

There’s a funny sort of contradiction about life.

Two people are allowed to exist together or apart, one state or the other. A mind must be made up, never wavering. Set your course and steer into the path you choose.

But what comes, then, of that precise moment of startling clarity, when you realise you made the wrong choice? What of the draining, dull terror that your life is unfolding down a path that you may have intended once, but no longer recognise?

There’s no concession for that.

There’s no space afforded for the ugly, awkward process of stumbling back towards one another, blind in the dark and afraid - afraid of change, afraid that shapes have shifted in your absence, but afraid most of all that nothing has.

She and Scott were always excellent at running into the exact same brick wall over and over again.

All of this and nothing passes through Tessa's head as they walk, side by side, through the deserted park on the corner of Rue Belvedere.

Scott’s hand is wrapped over the umbrella between them; his arm jostles against hers with every step, a rustle of clothing. Their shoes crunch on the wet gravel. If their steps fall in time, if he stands so close that Tessa can see his breath puff out in faint clouds of warm air, she pretends not to notice it. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. To a passer-by, they could be nothing more than two old friends braving the autumn downpour together.

Rain pours from the heavens. Tessa has never seen so much in her entire life; it spatters at her feet, turns her fingers so numb with cold that she almost considers slipping them up Scott’s coat sleeves (he used to make an excellent, if reluctant, space heater for early mornings at the rink). She settles for pulling her coat tighter around her and shoving her hands into her pockets.

When Scott clears his throat, his fingers flex around the umbrella handle, the knuckles pushing up white against his skin. Not that Tessa is paying attention. Because she isn’t.

“Guess I can cross ‘drowning on dry land’ off the bucket list,” he says, his voice teasing and light. “If this is the best Paris has to offer, we’re going to need to have words. This city has definitely not been treating you right.”

“I’m telling you, this is my favourite place in the whole city. Even now.“

Scott cranes an eyebrow upwards, so high that it looks as though it’s ready to disappear off his face entirely. “Uh-huh. Okay, Tess.”

“I’m serious. I love it here. This place can be whatever you need it to be. I come here when I’m looking for inspiration, if I need a couple of minutes of calm… everything and anything. You see that bench over there? That’s where I eat lunch. Weather permitting, naturally.”

Scott squints into the rain, following her raised finger. Between the mist of water and the grey light filtering down from behind the clouds, it’s just possible to make out a bench overlooking the pond, perched underneath a knotted, leafy tree.

“Naturally,” Scott repeats, sounding faintly amused. “Bet you made good friends with the ducks.”

Tessa turns her head to flash him a quick smile. “Some of my best ideas have come from conversations with the ducks, I’ll have you know. They’re excellent company.”

Scott chuckles. “Careful, keep talking like that and they’ll want a cut of your profits.”

They wander down the pathway, following the path into a low tunnel of saplings. The thick-leaved canopy keeps out the rain and the light both; illuminating the way, instead, are dozens of lanterns hanging from delicate metal arches supporting the saplings. Scott tilts his head back to look at them while he walks, the umbrella falling to his side. Tessa hangs back a few paces, watching him. The light from the lanterns seems almost a living creature as it moves across his face; it catches the gleam of russet-brown in his eye, the pink flush of his lips, parting just barely as he lets out a quiet noise of wonder.

There’s never been anything insincere in the way Scott approaches the world.  She thinks that perhaps that’s why people find themselves drawn to him, like a moth to a flame. He holds his heart open and unguarded, loves so fiercely and so without regard. It’s easy to be cynical. Scott chooses to make himself vulnerable, every day of his life, and the world is better off for it.

“You better not be leading me into some dark alleyway never to be found again,” Scott says, tipping his head to the side with a grin that is far too relaxed to take anything he says seriously. “Remember, I hold the umbrella.”

Tessa rolls her eyes, hurrying to catch up. “Please. I know where I’m going. Hold off on the mutiny for a minute longer.”

The tunnel continues for a few hundred yards before emerging into a perfectly circular clearing: small and neat, bordered on all sides by tall hedges reaching up to the sky. A raked gravel pathway circles the perimeter, and reaches forwards into the centre of the clearing like the spokes of a wheel. Flowerbeds blossoming with red and white flowers occupy the spaces between, their dark leaves dripping with rainwater.

Within the very centre of the circle stands a sculpture of a woman, her face turned towards the sky. The sculpture is distinct not because of its grandeur. It is not the tallest or the largest, nor the most ornately carved or decorated. The small, square pedestal it stands on is not leafed in gold or inlaid with fine metals. Any details of the sculpture’s face have long since been eroded; the eyes are blank and featureless, the cheeks smooth, the proud line of the lip lost to years gone by. But, as the two of them stand together and stare at the statue, water pattering off the umbrella above them, they watch raindrops collect in the gentle hollows of the statue’s eyes, overflowing across the cheeks and trickling off the tip of her chin.

It looks rather like the stone woman is crying.

Next to Tessa, Scott raises an eyebrow. “Cheerful. No wonder they tucked this out of sight.”

“You think she’s sad?” Tessa says. Her eyes move across the blank stone features of the statue. “I think she’s wonderful. Look at the inscription on the placard, see-“ and she leads Scott down the pathway to peer at the letters engraved on the bronze. “- _Nous promettons selon nos esperances, et nous tenos selon nos craintes_. We promise according to our hopes; we fulfil according to our fears.”

She shrugs her shoulders, buries her hands further into her pockets. “On a day like today she’s inconsolable with loss, but come back tomorrow when the clouds have cleared and she’ll be fine. Her face always points towards the sky, no matter how many days of rain might come. She reminds me that there’s always hope. That was important for me back when I first moved here. It still is, I guess.”

For a long moment, Scott doesn’t speak. He barely moves; he doesn’t flinch as rain splatters off the statue and onto his cheek.

“Moving here must have been tough,” he says, finally, and she nods.

They don’t talk about three years ago. Sure, they talk around it – tentative and careful, recoiling from every question like snakes thrust out into the blistering desert sun. Tessa doesn’t expect they’ll come to it any time soon. Three years on, it’s still an open wound, too fresh to poke and prod at. There’s no room to be clumsy with a thing such as that.

When she moves to sit on the small bench in front of the statue, he moves with her. She stares down at her feet: her plain white sneakers (once clean, now sodden and cold with rainwater), dwarfed by Scott’s boots. The bench is small; there’s barely room for the two of them to sit side by side. She can feel the heat of his body bleeding through where he’s pressed against her. She wonders whether she should say something. If this is the last day she has before he returns to Montreal, the last day she sees him in who knows how long, shouldn’t she say something?

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Scott looking out into the distance, back the way they came.

“It’s good to spend time with you again,” he says – and then he grins, roguish, and his brown eyes glint like they always used to when he was trying to make her laugh, trying to break the mood with something that he knew would distract her. “Even if it does involve hanging round creepy old statues in the pouring rain. I’d say you were trying to send me shuffling off to an early grave if I didn’t know you better.”

“You’re barely thirty.”

“Pushing thirty-six isn’t ‘barely thirty’, Tess. I’ve got grey hairs now – shh, don’t tell anyone.”

A curious smile spreads across Tessa’s face. “No… really? Didn’t Charlie stay brown until his forties? What went wrong with you?”

“It’s the stress of dealing with those two terrors, I swear. Look,” he says, and dips his head towards her. A few strands of hair flop forward. “It’s pretty hard to tell at the moment, they’re right in the middle. But I know it’s coming soon enough.”

Tessa raises her eyebrows. She leans forward an inch, concentrating on the crown of his head – and sure enough, a decent cluster of silvery strands of hair masquerade among the forest of hazel brown.

“It’s not that bad,” she says. “You’ve got at least a few years left to live, I’d say. Plenty of time to get that last will and testament drafted.”

“Geez, T, I can always count on you for reassurance.”

“You could dye your greys. That’s what I do. I went out and booked an emergency appointment at the salon the day I found the first couple. I haven’t seen any more since, I assume they’re too frightened of me now.”

“I don’t blame them,” Scott mutters. Tessa’s head snaps round and she fixes him with a glare; all narrowed eyes and narrowed lips, hopelessly exaggerated. Scott simply smiles at her, the picture of innocence. His ‘I have no idea what I’ve possibly done to upset you’ face is well-practiced. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work quite so well now he’s longer twenty years old, rosy-cheeked and floppy-haired.

“You know, if I stare hard enough, I think I can see the steam coming out of your ears,” he muses. “It’s pretty neat. I mean, who needs the umbrella?”

Before she can do anything, he chucks the umbrella onto the gravel in front of them. Tessa gasps in shock. The rain is like a thousand tiny fingers of cold, soaking her through in a matter of seconds – plastering her hair to her face, trickling in icy rivulets down the neck of her coat.

“Scott!” she yells, jumping to her feet. The man-child in question whoops a laugh, throwing his head back to the sky.

“Isn’t this what your statue is all about?” he says, grinning, eyes closed. “Taking the rain as it comes? Seems to me like a perfect interpretation.”

Tessa scoops up the umbrella from the gravel and thrusts it above her head. “You’re not supposed to take it so _literally_.”

“Aw, c’mon,” he says, cracking one eye open to give her a lazy smile. “Live a little dangerously.”

For a second, as he grins at her through half-lidded eyes, it certainly feels dangerous. Then he shakes his head like a wet dog, spraying her with droplets of icy water, and she shrieks. Time, it seems, has done nothing to dull Scott’s unique ability to attract her and exasperate her in quick succession.  


* * *

  
It’s not like she intentionally invites Scott back to her place.

Well, she does.

There’s a definite thought process behind her decision, one that stems from a desire to avoid the embarrassment of huddling like drowned rats in the nearest coffee shop. Her apartment is clean, well-stocked with towels, and within reasonable walking distance.

It’s the only logical solution.

Unfortunately, it strikes her when she’s standing in the hallway of her apartment, trying not to feel like a tiny insect pinned to a microscope slide as Scott examines the books on her hallway shelves, that she doesn’t actually _like_ having people in her home.

Sure, it’s a lovely apartment, a home to be proud of, tucked away in the eaves of a townhouse with a pretty green varnished front door and a beautiful open-plan living room and kitchen. There’s no beating the view from her balcony, either. It’s the perfect spot to watch the sun set across the city; later, in the early hours of the evening, the purpling light will scatter over rooftops and church spires, straight into her living room.

She doubts Scott would even care what her home looks like. He never showed any interest in her decorating job on the London house, beyond looking far too pleased with himself when he dubbed it “The White House”. All the same, his attention is unnerving. He meanders from room to room while she busies herself with digging out a fresh set of towels from her linen closet; she can hear him moving about her apartment, his footsteps on the floorboards. His very presence seems to warp the things around him. She finds herself noticing inconsequential details that she’s overlooked for years: the glossy hardcover books arranged on the hallway shelves, just _slightly_ too symmetrical to look well-read; the tiny spot of rust on the towel rail in the guest bathroom; the fact that none of the many photos arranged on the walls and surfaces contain any evidence of her life since moving to Paris.

These things bother Tessa when they never have before.

And it bothers her that she’s bothered by them.

He’s standing in the living room, dripping rainwater onto the hardwood floor when she enters, fluffy white towel in hand. Hearing her approach, he snatches his hand back from the photos arranged atop her mantelpiece.

“Here you go,” Tessa says, thrusting the towel towards him. He takes it with a nod; his fingers, still cold and clammy from the rain, brush hers and she flinches. Scott’s eyes dart up to meet hers but she turns away, clearing her throat. “I’ll make us some coffee. Are you still two sugars?”

Scott’s voice is muffled through the towel thrown over his head. “None, actually, thanks.”

Tessa gives an incredulous laugh as she makes her way up the steps into the kitchen. “None at all? Who are you, and what have you done with Scott Moir?”

“It’s a long story…”

“I’ve got time.”

Scott pulls the towel down from his head and slings it around his neck, looking up at her with a somewhat reluctant gaze, almost ashamed – and Tessa immediately wishes she’d never asked. She doesn’t need to be a psychic to know that she’s not going to like what comes out of Scott’s mouth.

“It was one of Amy’s pet projects, you know…” he says, haltingly. “Little things we could do to be healthier. She was always like that, getting on these kicks about superfoods and antioxidants and that kind of stuff. Nutrition. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal but, uh, it made her happy so… no sugars.” He rubs a hand across the back of his neck. “Not really a long story when I say it out loud, huh?”

Tessa studiously avoids eye contact. “Hm. Good for her.”

Scott hesitates in space for a minute or two, standing in silence as she prepares the coffee. From over the kitchen counter, Tessa can see him toying with the end of the towel, his lips moving wordlessly around sounds that she only wishes she could interpret.

“You know, um… I’m not still with her. With Amy, I mean,” he says, finally.

Tessa takes two mugs out from the top shelf and sets them down on the counter with a clatter. “I know. Your mum told me a while back.”

Scott nods. “Right. Of course you’d know. Who didn’t know?” He looks distinctly as though he would like nothing more than to melt into the floorboards. Tessa can’t help but share the sentiment. “I wanted to be clear, just in case…”

“Thank you, Scott,” Tessa says. “You can go and sit out on the balcony. I’ll join you when the coffee’s done.”

With barely restrained relief, Scott does as he’s told.

Tessa waits until the balcony doors close firmly behind him with a quiet ‘ _click_ ’. Only then does she lean heavily back against the counter, her shoulders hunching forwards as she lets out a sigh.

It’s enough to drive a person mad, this constant wheeling between familiarity and strangeness; the abrupt disjunct when she’s reminded that the person she once considered the most important part of her life now has years of his that are utterly foreign to her.

But she only gives herself a brief couple of seconds to wallow – and then she straightens her spine, finishes making the coffee, and joins Scott outside.

The rain has stopped now. Mist hangs in the air – not obscuring, simply present in the way that feels as though Tessa could reach out and pluck a raindrop into an open palm. Scott is leaning forward, examining the contents of the flowerbox attached to her balcony railings. She keeps a rotating assortment of plant life in the box, adding a splash of colour; the flowers remain until she inevitably (accidentally) kills them, and then she swaps them out for new ones. It’s probably the least sustainable form of gardening ever.

“ _Et voila_ ,” Tessa announces, placing down the mugs on the table next to him. “And that’s the extent of my French, so you better not ask me for anything more.”

Scott scoops up his mug and leans back into his chair, grinning. “No judgement here. Remember that time we thought moving to Montreal would force us to finally learn French? Well, I’m still waiting for that breakthrough. Even Nat’s lessons can’t save me.”

Tessa gives a small smile, folding her hands around her mug. Heat radiates through the china, warming her against the chill of the air. Out across the skyline, the city bustles with life; people mill about in streets below, tiny specks of colour and movement; car horns and ambulance sirens blare; a never-ending stream of new things.

It’s strangely peaceful, despite the chaos below.

“I love it up here,” she says, absent-mindedly tapping the side of her mug as she speaks, and Scott takes a sip of his coffee. “It’s the main reason I chose this apartment, actually. From here you can see almost the whole city – from the edge of the Arrondissements right up to the river. I could sit here for hours and watch the world pass by.”

Scott turns his head to look out across the skyline. “Sounds nice,” he says. “Lonely, but nice.”

“What, should I get a cat or two for company to make you feel better?” Tessa says, with a teasing smile. “Pas de Chat Junior?”

Scott wrinkles his nose. “Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, that. Bit of a mouthful.”

“Everyone’s a critic.”

“I’m just trying to save you picking cat hair out of every microwave meal. Doing my duty as a friend.”

Tessa rolls her eyes at him, resolutely ignoring the way the word “friend” rings in her ears on loop.

“To be honest,” she says, “that sort of thing was never on my radar. I don’t know how long I’m going to be in Paris. I’d rather not make any kind of long-term commitment while I’m figuring things out.”

Scott looks up in surprise. “Three years isn’t enough to know whether you’re coming or going?”

“Well, sure, I mean-“ Tessa starts, and then stops. She lowers her mug to the table. “No,” she sighs. “I guess not. I’m still figuring things out.”

Looking down at her hands, she scratches her nail over the ridges of her mug, tracing the base.  

“I don’t know,” she says. “I still feel… unsettled. Like I’m searching for something bigger or better. Whatever that might be.”

“Hm,” Scott says. His voice sounds odd; there’s something strained about it, an undercurrent that she can’t quite put her finger on, and when she glances up to meet his eyes, he averts his gaze.

She frowns. “Are you okay?”

“Of course, yeah,” he says, but it’s muffled, thick – the words coming out all wrong. Abruptly, he pushes his chair back, the sound of scraping metal, and gets to his feet. “I, uh – I have something that I need to ask you, Tess.”

Tessa’s eyes widen fractionally. Her heart thuds in her chest. “Oh. Okay?”

Scott leans forward against the balcony for a second, then turns back to her, his hands fisted by his sides. His eyes meet hers, and she’s struck by the sudden intensity of his gaze. He looks at her like he used to before they took the ice at competition: completely focused, composed, his entire world drawn down to her. The thrill of it nearly takes her breath away.

“Come and work with me,” he says. “In Montreal, coaching Natalie and Gabriel. Come and be a part of our team.”

And all at once, the world seems to slow.

It’s as if she’s looking through the lens of a high-speed camera. She can pick out every single detail: his thumb rubbing over the back of his closed fist, the fine muscles at his jaw clenching tight, his feet pulled together and planted rock-steady on the floor, purposefully.

He’s terrified.  

“What?” she stammers. “What are you saying?”

“I’m offering you a job, Tess. Next season, at Gadbois. Come and help me make Natalie and Gabriel into champions. We could do it, I know we could.”

Scott’s gaze bores a hole into her; it’s as if he’s unable to look away, his eyes locked onto hers.

“The kids brought it up a while ago, after your first visit,” Scott continues, “so I floated the idea with Marie and Patch and they both agreed straight away. You did an incredible job with the choreography, and I’ve never seen Natalie and Gabriel more focused or enthusiastic than when they’re on the ice with you. You might not feel like it, but you fit right in with the team, Tess.”

Her mind whirls.

“I wasn’t planning on asking so soon,” he says. “I was going to wait until the end of the season, until everything had settled, but with what you said in your emails, about your job and needing a break, and then you being there at the Grand Prix Final-“ he takes a step forwards, his eyes burning with an inner fire, “-God, it just felt so _good_ , Tess. It felt _right_. Like this is the way it should be, all the time, the two of us working together. Didn’t it?”

Tessa thinks of the weekend just gone.

The nerves like a live current under her skin, puppeting her body at strange angles and shapes.

His fist knocking against hers over the tops of Natalie and Gabriel’s heads.

The terror of standing at the boards, her heart in her mouth; the hush of the crowd, expectant; the line of judges opposite, ready to grasp on any mistake; the clean rasp of skate blades across ice, hoping that the sound would continue, smooth and unbroken, for the next four minutes.

His arm around her waist, his forehead against hers, the four of them squashed together in the Kiss and Cry and all around her, cheers and laughter and bodies trembling with nerves and excitement and exhilaration.

His jacket around her shoulders.

His voice joining hers in song.

His hand, curled tightly around hers, as though it would never let go again.

“It did,” she says, quietly – almost a whisper. “It felt right.”  

Scott’s eyes light up. “Exactly. So why should that end?”

She wants to answer him, she really does. Her heart pounds in her throat, her mind is alive with it, with the words that pull to be free: yes, yes I’ll go with you, yes, I’ll coach your team with you, yes, I’ll come back _home_. The intensity of it takes her aback. But she knows how these things work. There’s a kneejerk reaction, and then there’s taking time to think things through, outside of the heat of the moment.

And then there’s Rose.

“Scott,” she begins, gently, her hand half-outstretched towards him. “I can’t answer you right now. You know me. I need time. I need to think about this properly, and talk to Rose, my family… I can’t make such an important decision in a split second. I need to be certain.”

Her hand hovers in the air, unanswered by his.

“You understand that, right?” she says.

Scott swallows, nodding, but she can see him become smaller before her eyes, the fire behind his dimming, like a light turned down.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Sure. I get it. Take all the time you need. There’s no rush.”

His eyes flicker up to hers, then away across the skyline – as if he’s afraid of what he might see in them. He thinks she’s being polite, she realises. He thinks she’s giving him her usual “oh, that’s so sweet of you to offer” spiel, while making a mental note to never answer his emails again.

She gets to her feet as he turns away. “Scott, wait-“

Before she even realises what she’s doing, she’s grabbed his wrist. He stares down at her hand on him like it’s the limb of some alien creature. His eyes are filled with hurt; he hasn’t been able to cover it up in time, and she reads it clear as day.

“What?” he says, hoarsely.

She doesn’t say anything. Underneath her fingertips, she can feel his pulse rattling against his skin.

For a moment they stand awkwardly next to each other, each waiting for the other to make a move; as though they’re seven and nine again, and Scott makes her nervous in a way that she sort of likes but can’t put her finger on why.

Then she slides her arms around him and pulls him close.

He stiffens, immediately, like a puppet whose strings have been pulled all at once.  Ever so carefully, she leans forwards and rests her chin on his shoulder.

“I’m not saying no,” she whispers, into his ear. “I just need time.”

And slowly, like it takes him time to remember how, he relaxes against her.

His head dips to the curve of her neck – she feels his breath warm on her skin, feels him breathe her in, the tension draining from him as he remembers how to ground himself in her.

“Okay,” he says, quiet, rumbling through his chest.

There are things she’s always known about Scott that will never change.

When he breathes, his ribcage pushes up and out, swelling against hers, the exhale of his breath tickling her skin, raising goosebumps.

When his hands move to her back, his fingers press into the dip of her spine, so gentle and reverent that she would barely feel it if she wasn't hyper-aware of him and the way he moves in the space around her.

When he nestles into the dip of her neck, his nose presses against the hollow of her clavicle, his body settling into place against hers with a simple, easy familiarity.

She finds the breath catching in her throat.

It’s the truth to say that there are hundreds of ways in which she doesn’t know Scott any more, and it’s kindness to say that it doesn’t matter. But in the minutes that pass with his arms around her, and the skyline of Paris a blur beyond the ridge of his shoulder, she knows this much:

This is what they were made for – moulded for one another, not by design or by providence, but by force of will.

Their bodies will always know how to fit together, even if they themselves flounder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I'm SO sorry this chapter took two whole months to get out. I assumed, having drafted nearly the entire fic, that the re-drafting process would be a comparative breeze. Oh, how little I knew. All I can say is that the next update will come sooner than this one.
> 
> It's very quiet in VM land at the moment, so feel free to come and yell at me (or talk politely, if you prefer) over @virtueoso on Tumblr. I'd like to get into the habit of writing short little pieces. If anyone has any ideas or requests, please drop them in my inbox!
> 
> Lastly, a shout-out to my wonderful beta. I'd been feeling pretty horrid and uninspired for a while working on this chapter, and it was her patience and support that helped me find my motivation again. A simple 'thank you' hardly seems enough for everything she does, but it's all I've got - so thank you!


	9. Chapter 9

The simple fact is that she wants to take Scott up on his offer.

Standing on the balcony of her Paris apartment, with his words ringing fresh in her ears and his arms around her, there’s not a single fibre of her being that doesn’t thrill at the thought of going with him. Her brain doesn’t so much as run with the idea as it hurtles into flight with it. She wants to say yes. She wants to return to Montreal, to dive back into a world she never thought she would have the slightest desire to belong to again.

When he leaves - and it’s not for hours, the two of them talking about anything and everything, sharing the evening together - she lingers in the doorway of her apartment building to wave him off. Darkness lies thick across the skyline, the sun long set. Street lamps break the gloom every few feet, bright beacons against the purple-black of the night, the clouds like streaks of charcoal. It’s dark enough that she can’t see his expression as he gets into the taxi. He settles himself into the back seat, his face blurry through the rear window as he turns to wave at her. There’s a smile on his face, she bets - that broad, untempered one that scrunches up his features, well-worn.

God, she doesn’t want him to leave. She doesn’t want this day to end.

That’s alright to admit to herself, isn’t it?

It’s okay to say that she genuinely considers getting into the taxi with him, right now, and joining him on his flight back to Canada. She knows he wouldn’t even bat an eyelid. He’d have some stupid line about how she took her time about it, and ask her whether he needs to reserve a seat for her three extra suitcases. There’d be some excuse for him to clap his hand over her knee, or maybe knock his shoulder against hers, teasing – but he wouldn’t pull away after, and she wouldn’t want him to.  

She can accept all the thoughts that run through her head, and have the clarity of mind not to act on them.

So she watches, and she waits, until his taxi turns the corner and disappears out of sight, and all that she’s left with is the fading rumble of tyres on asphalt.

She imagines that a little part of her goes with him too.  
  


* * *

  
When Tessa was five years old, she’d dreamed of dancing the part of Giselle.

Her most prized possession was a VHS tape of the National Ballet’s production, gifted to her by her brother for Christmas that year. The recording was ancient, so grainy that the faces of the dancers were little more than a prickling of hazy, pink fuzz, but it didn’t matter to Tessa. She spent hours in front of the television in the living room, her little feet pattering across the floorboards as she copied the steps.

She remembers the exact moment she swapped that dream for another - the time when she’d gone away a child and come back with something new instilled within her: a drive, a hunger for competition, to climb higher and faster and further than all the other little girls around her.

It was springtime, and she was alone in Toronto for the first round of the lengthy selection process for the National Ballet’s summer school. The school was all anyone in her ballet class could talk about; it could launch your career, she’d heard, could set you on a path to Principal and beyond, if you worked hard and you had the talent to back it up. Her mother and her ballet teacher had been fussing about the audition all year, endlessly strategising after class about what Tessa would wear, how she would introduce herself, the way she would sit and stand and nod her head. 

Tessa hadn't  _thought_ she was nervous, but the worry of others was infectious. Her mother's hands had trembled when she dropped Tessa off at the residential dorm she would be staying in for the weekend. It hadn't been much - she'd hugged Tessa so briefly that she barely even registered the contact. Be good and work hard, her mother had said, just like it's class and you're practicing for your teacher. No difference at all. Except there had been a strange look on her face, like she wanted to say something more, and when she'd reached out to smooth a few strands of hair back behind Tessa's ear, her hand lingered there, hovering in the air by Tessa's pale cheek. 

Her mother's hands were always cold. 

She said it came from a mixture of days spent sat in freezing rinks with nothing but microwaveable heat packs to keep her company, and terrible genetics. When Tessa was young, she used to have to remind herself not to flinch away from the contact. In the long run, it was excellent preparation for her future career. Short-term, it was rather unpleasant. But that day in spring, she would have given anything for that touch to stay, cool and cold and comforting against the side of her face.

Instead, her mother gave one last, stoic smile, and disappeared around the corner. 

Tessa didn’t sleep at all that night. Her bunk bed in the dorm was too narrow, and the railings on either side too high. She tossed and turned, trying not to wake all the girls sharing her room. Her palms were already damp with sweat, her fingers cold and clammy; they trembled the following morning as she hunched over to slip her ballet slippers on in the changing room. Other nine-year olds might not have recognised the low, churning sensation in the pit of their stomach, like someone stretching a hand out over your innards and clenching tight, but Tessa was already well-acquainted with the feeling.

At eight in the morning, the instructors lined them all up in a row: sixteen little girls in their pink satin shoes, like china dolls on a mantelpiece.

Her teacher had described, in great detail, how rigorous the selection process would be. Tessa wasn’t to fall behind; she was to remember all her lessons about pointing her toes and keeping her lines, smiling through the terror, a rigor mortis grin. And, miraculously, she did. The thin, pointed finger of the director leading the class never landed on her. She was never pulled to one side, and told, in hushed tones, that she was to gather her belongings and return home. At the end of the session, she stood in final position with her legs burning and her face as pink as her leotard. As the final notes of the accompanist trailed away, she looked around to see just three other girls remaining. All three stared back at her, wide-eyed.

Afterwards, in the hallway outside the dance studio, the three of them pulled her into a tight, squealing hug.  

“I can’t believe it!” one of them said, her ponytail swinging as she jumped up and down. “They didn’t send me home! We made it!”

All Tessa could think was that it wasn’t nearly as nice as having a hand to hold, and the cold, comforting weight of a medal around her neck.    
  


* * *

_  
Hey, Mom. _

_It’s Tessa. Sorry to leave a message like this, but I couldn’t get hold of you and there’s something I really need to get off my chest. But first, I need you to promise to listen to this message the whole way through, okay? I might say some things that you’re not going to like, but I need you to listen to all of it._

_Okay?_

_Good._

_Please remember that you’ve just promised to reserve judgement until the very end of this message._

_Scott came to visit me in Paris. I know you saw me with him at the Grand Prix Final, but we spent the day together afterwards, and Mom… he offered me a job._

_It’s only for one season, and I’d only be working with Natalie and Gabriel – the team I was doing choreography for back when I visited for your birthday, remember? It seems like a good idea, I mean… logically speaking, if everything goes terribly, at least it’s only a year of my life. It wouldn’t mess up my life here irreparably to be away for one year. At least I’ll have tried it and then I’ll know, for certain. I’ll be able to decide whether it’s something that I want to go back to, or whether I should just close the door on that whole world, once and for all._

_And I know what you’re going to say - believe me, it’s nothing I haven’t thought about myself, a hundred times over. But things have changed now. They’re different. He’s not the person he used to be, he’s - he’s serious. Maybe that’s a funny way to describe him, but it’s true. I see it in his eyes sometimes, I think. He knows this is it._ _This is the last chance we get._

_Anyway, um… I only really meant to call to tell you that I was thinking about coming back to Canada. You’re always complaining that you lost a daughter across the Atlantic Ocean. I thought some good news might cheer you up! Well, potential good news._

_I haven’t made my mind up yet, but you’ll be the first to know when I do._

_Promise._

_Love you. Speak to you soon._  
  


* * *

  
“Hold still. You’re so _fidgety_ , Tess. How am I supposed to turn this simple canvas into a work of art if you keep moving every five seconds? Honestly, the conditions I have to put up with. Where’s my knighthood?”

Tessa stares straight ahead, the muscles at her jaw twitching dangerously. It takes all of her willpower not to burst into laughter – that, combined with the fact that Rose is wielding her nail polish applicator like she’s ready to commit murder if Tessa so much as blinks.

“Hurry up, then. It doesn’t need to be a work of art, I just wanted something that would hide the gross bitten edges.”

Rose gives a perfunctory shake of her head. “No. We’re creating genius here. And you can’t rush genius.”

Around the sixth bottle of nail polish Rose produced from her bedside dresser, Tessa began to suspect her request for “fun but tasteful” had been vetoed. At the half-hour mark, she lost the will to fight it. Her friend’s denim dungarees are splotched with varying colours of varnish; Tessa is sure she’ll find some way to spin it as “distressed chic”. She’d probably be the only person in the world who could actually pull it off, too.

“Don’t you think you’re going a _little_ overboard?” she asks. “I only have ten fingers.”

“Careful, or I’ll start on your toes too,” Rose says, and Tessa decides to shut up.

From her position, cross-legged on the floor of Rose’s bedroom, she can see out of the open doorway all the way down the long hall that leads to the cheerful, bottle-green front door with its porthole window. Rose’s apartment is eclectic, to say the least, with mismatched furniture and an interior design that makes no logical sense to Tessa, but it reflects the character of its owner perfectly. Perched above a little family-run bakery, the apartment is always warm and cosy, typically filled with the aroma of something mouth-watering - however much Rose complains about being woken at five in the morning when the bakery ovens fire up for the day.

“So…” Rose begins, in a sing-song tone of voice. “Someone sent me a very interesting video the other day…”

“If it’s another compilation of home decorating failures, I’m honestly good, thanks. The damage to my retinas has already been done.”

“Mm, not quite. This one was more personal. Can you guess?”

Tessa rolls her eyes. “I don’t know. A five-minute montage of all the times I fell on my ass in competition, set to “I Get Knocked Down”?”

Leaning forward and squinting as she puts the finishing touches to Tessa’s nails, Rose raises her eyebrows. “Oddly specific. Remind me to Google that one later. But no, I’ll put you out of your misery. It was you and Scott at that competition you went to last weekend, the one you told me I wasn’t allowed to turn up to-“

“-only because I didn’t trust you not to try and legally marry us without our consent.”

“If your signature’s there on the paper, _technically_ that’s consent…” Rose begins, before muffling a burst of laughter. “Wow, that got me a proper thousand-yard stare. You don’t break those out very often, Tess. I’m honoured.”

With a deadpan look on her face, Tessa pulls her hands out from Rose’s grip. “Go on, then. Why was this such an interesting video?”

Rose’s expression takes on an odd quality.

“You’re very strange, you know. The two of you,” she says. “It’s like you knew how to be friends once, but you don’t know how to get back to that point. I watched that whole video, all twenty minutes of it. Scott spent more time looking at you than at his own team.”

“That’s not true,” Tessa mumbles, half-heartedly.

“Okay, okay. He’s a consummate professional. He just spent all the time his team _wasn’t_ on the ice watching you instead.”

Tessa studies her hands, finding them suddenly much more interesting than meeting Rose’s eyes. Her heart is beginning to do that strange little leaping gallop that it does whenever she’s been dropped into an uncomfortable conversation, hammering against her ribcage as though it would rather be anywhere but constrained within her body.

Rose sits back on her heels and folds her arms across her chest.

“Why does it make you so uncomfortable when I talk about Scott?” she says. “You two have an obvious chemistry. There’s no point denying that.”

Picking at the tender skin around her painted nails, Tessa grimaces. “I’m not trying to, I just…People always ask about Scott and I, about our relationship, and I don’t even have any clue where to begin…”

She hesitates, struggling for words.

“Start at the beginning,” Rose supplies.

Tessa looks up, eyeing her friend. She wonders if Rose has any idea what she’s asking for; Tessa has twenty-five years of history to tell, none of them easy. Nobody’s ever interested in the process, after all. They want the nice, clean ending, tied up with a ribbon – the one that she and Scott have never been able to provide.

“The very beginning? You’re asking for a long story, you know. It’s not simple.”

Rose nods. “I know.”

There’s something about the way she says it – not eager, not judgemental, just clear and calm and quiet, like she would understand no matter the words that came out of Tessa’s mouth, that before Tessa even realises it, she’s nodding too, and taking a breath, deep and steadying. If she's going to do this, she decides, she's going to do it properly. She won't gloss over the downbeats, won't sugarcoat the moments she wishes she could take back, the words that have done damage she feared was irreparable. She'll tell the truth - the whole truth, and nothing but.

“Okay,” she says, planting her hands on her crossed knees. “Let me try to explain.”

And it goes a little something like this.  
  


* * *

  
You’re seven when you meet him, and you think he’s the coolest person you’ve ever seen in your whole entire life, with his buzzed hair and his gum-tooth smile as he rockets around the rink.

You don’t know any better – you’re young and impressionable. Soon you’ll discover that he’s not really _that_ cool, and his fashion sense is abysmal, but you still get butterflies when he holds your hand, and his face when he smiles for you is softer somehow, gentler. He smiles at you like you’re the prettiest thing he’s ever seen.

Sometimes, you think that maybe he’ll be the one. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to find both a future and a home in one person.

But you’re young.

You don’t yet understand how the world works.

.

You’re fifteen when you move to a different country.

Your family doesn’t go with you, not at first – and so, for three months, he’s all you have. He’s every friend, every confidant, every person you can call on for help. He takes you grocery shopping every Saturday and stops you from buying fifteen ready-meals for dinner (“C’mon, Tess, your mom would _kill_ me!”). He even drives you thirty miles to the furniture store, the big one on the edge of town, just so you can pick out new curtains for your room. The old curtains are too dusty and dark; you’ve only ever had your little room in your parents’ house, with the pastel purple curtains, and he knows it upsets you not to wake with the sunlight on your face, so he doesn’t complain once, not even when you make him stand there for hours while you pick a new set.

Once, in those first three months, when you’re sitting in the front seat of his car, chattering away about your online classes and how they’re _much_ easier than anything you were doing at school in London, your remote tutor keeps saying you should move up a grade so you can get your diploma quicker - he leans over and kisses you.

You’re too shocked to do anything. You don’t even move. Your eyes blink, saucer-wide, frozen. His lips aren’t warm at all – they’re cold and a little bit chapped, and he doesn’t really move them so you just sit there, faces pressed awkwardly together, his nose squashed against yours.

After a moment, he pulls back. His cheeks are flushed red, and he coughs once as he leans back across to his side of the car.

“Sorry, I, er – I thought we should try it,“ he mumbles. “Danny said that we should get it out of the way, you know… it’s supposed to make things easier when we skate. It’s a stupid idea. Never mind.”

Your voice is hidden too deep, lost. You want to tell him it’s alright, that you don’t think it’s a stupid idea at all, that for as long as you can remember, you’ve wondered what his lips would feel like against yours. But you can’t force the words out past the lump in your throat. When he starts up the engine, the rumbling shakes through you, swallows your sound, and you look over at him to see his eyes fixed ramrod-straight on the road ahead. There’s no more conversation to be had.

On Friday, you tell your mother. By Saturday, she’s arranged to move in with you.

He doesn’t kiss you again, not for a long time.

.

Now you’re twenty, and the world opens for you like the pages of a book.

Suddenly, everyone wants everything from you: your time, your money, your words. You feel as though they would pull the very thoughts from your head if they could, splay them out across a broadsheet for the nation to bear witness.

“Canada’s sweethearts”, they call you – only you won’t do the decent patriotic thing and get together. It makes you feel guilty, somehow, when you repeat (for the thousandth time) that you’re not a couple, and watch their faces fall. You wish you had a better answer to give them, one that’s not a substitute for ‘sometimes when he grabs you by the hips to push you up into a lift, you bite your lip and wish that his hands would just skirt a _little_ lower’, and ‘sometimes when you’re drunk at one of the few parties you attend, making out with a guy in the corner, you catch him staring at you from across the room with a look in his eyes that could stop a train’.

"Not a couple" is easier.

.

Everything changes when you’re twenty-eight.

You’re older, you think – wiser. You’ve been around long enough to have a handle on things. You can have the difficult conversations that need to be had, and you grow closer because of it. He’s part of your life not because he’s all that you’ve ever known, but because you lived the alternative, and you chose him.

Together, you are unstoppable.

The night you win gold, you rent a room at a hotel in the city together, you get pleasantly buzzed off a bottle of terrifyingly expensive wine that Marie and Patch gifted you, and you don’t leave until the morning. It seems right, after everything. His hands guided you to victory, his body bearing the weight of yours, the two of you perfectly in tune, strung to an identical pitch. You should celebrate in a manner befitting that. You should move together like you were always meant to. The morning after, neither of you get out of bed for the five-thirty alarm that means you need to be halfway across the Olympic Village for press in an hour’s time. You lie there, head pillowed against his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing. His hand traces lazily up your spine. He’s not sleepy; he was always a early riser, but he seems peculiarly deep in thought that morning, his brow furrowing as he stares into space.

You kiss him, just to watch that frown melt away.

His lips are soft against yours, opening gratefully, but when you rest your head back down on his chest, he’s still staring into space.

And then he says, “Y’know, Tess, I think I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”

And your heart breaks for him, because, even after everything, even after gold and beyond, you don’t – at least, not in the way that he does.

He wants comfort and security and a home.

You want the world.

.

You’re twenty-eight, then twenty-nine, then thirty, and the years slip by with barely a whisper in passing. As fast as you try to hold on, they twist away just out of your reach: one past the other, each one shiny and new and fulfilled. Except they’re not fulfilled – not quite.

You have him for three months of the year, on tour: his body beneath yours, feverish heat, clutching at one another like the seconds will steal away from you if you don’t keep count of them. You have him for three months, pushed up against the back wall of the changing room that nobody uses, his head between your legs, because the only way he can focus is with his lips against you.  

And then, for the other nine months of the year, you make do alone. You watch him fall madly in love with another woman - and then the next, and the next. Sometimes it frustrates you beyond belief; other times it’s hopeless. In the end, it’s a bittersweet comfort, this endless parade of faces and names, as ever-changing as you are not.

You don’t yet realise that it’s a mistake to think that you don’t need him as much as he needs you.

.

There’s an art to lying, and it goes like this: you start with a truth.

You and Scott love each other.

Simple.

Now frame it with a lie, and a truth, and lie, and truth, until it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

You and Scott love each other, only not in the way that everybody wants. You love each other, only that ship sailed long ago. You love each other, only you’re terrified of ruining something sacred, only the timing is never right, only you’re scrambling to carve out identities of your own, only you can’t make it work and maybe it’s because you never allow yourselves to want too much, or maybe it’s because you just don’t love each other enough. Maybe it’s entirely possible to love and hate someone at the same time, and for nothing to come of either of those emotions. Maybe years upon years upon years together isn’t proud or strong; maybe it’s a history shaped like a millstone.

Now, close your eyes. Pick your truth.

.

At thirty-one, the ground disappears from beneath your feet.

It shouldn’t be a surprise. You’ve chiselled away at it for so long that there’s nothing else it can do but crumble away, but still. In your own ignorance, life finds a way to surprise you, again and again and again.

You’re retired now, officially. There’s no touring any more, no part of you that can stake any claim over what occurs in his life. You’ve gone your separate ways: he to Montreal, to coaching, and you to Paris. The split was not easy. In hindsight, you probably should have told him about the move more than a week before the flight, but he should have told you about a lot of things too. Spite makes a stranger of everybody, most of all yourself; you said things to him that day in February that you could never have dreamed of speaking aloud.

But still, you thought, even when he wouldn’t return your texts, even when he wouldn’t see you off at the airport – maybe.

Amy puts a full-stop to that fantasy.

You know as soon as you see the photos of the two of them together. The post appears on Facebook less than a month after your move to Paris, and you only ever see it once, but you remember it so vividly. They’re candid photos, taken at a family gathering at the Moir household. It must be a birthday of some kind (one of Scott’s countless nieces and nephews, probably, though the Moirs take any excuse to bundle all fifty-odd members of the extended family into a single room together) because there are party streamers hanging from the walls of the living room, silver and red and gold foil gleaming.

You scroll idly through the photos: Danny standing to deliver a speech at the head of a long dining table, Alma presenting a birthday cake, a gaggle of Moir children tearing around the back yard. Then, you alight on a photo of someone you don’t recognise, and your heart drops.

The first thing you remember thinking is that she’s nothing like his usual type. She’s not pretty in the conventional sense; her mouth is too wide, her eyes set a fraction too far apart. But she has a face made for laughter, open and honest - you can see it in the fine lines around her eyes, creased as she smiles up at him. Stray wisps of dark auburn hair hang down around her ears, messy but not unkempt. In the photo, he’s pushing the hair back behind her ear for her with a grin, looking for all the world like he’s so enraptured that he hasn’t even noticed the photographer.

Your throat tightens. It’s the flush of initial attraction, you tell yourself. He’s always like this, throwing himself into the deep end with every new relationship, with his relentless belief that this time will be _the_ time, despite how many failures have come before.

Except then you scroll down to the next photo.

The two of them are tucked up together on the sofa, his arm slung around her waist, her legs curled up beneath her, and they’re looking at each other with something that you recognise, as familiar as the room and the furniture and the people in the background of the photos.

You would recognise that look on his face anywhere, because it’s the one that greeted you, day in, day out. That look tells you his whole world rests in one person.

And it’s no longer you.

.

Everything is easier to ignore in Paris.

Here, the two of you are not household names, and your dinner company is not dissected endlessly on gossip sites. Here, you can lose yourself among the bustle of a city that has far more important things to worry about than the trivial relationship issues of two grown adults. Here, you can try to let the red, raw pain of separation fade into something more manageable.

It doesn’t, but you learn that if you don’t think about it, you can get by. There are certain things that you do not allow yourself the luxury of considering, and Scott - past, present, future - is one of them.

So you focus all your efforts into your work. You hit the ground running, putting in twelve, thirteen-hour days at the office. Technically, you’re a “creative consultant” for a fashion house looking to launch a new line of high-end athletic wear. There are meetings about market characteristics and materials and which of your many ventures into fashion over the past six or seven years was the most successful and why - and all the while, you take in as much as you can, absorbing as much knowledge as people will give you over coffee or lunch or a bribe for tickets to Worlds.

And then you meet Rose.

You don’t remember the first time she talks to you. You only remember that when she does, it’s like you’ve known her all your life. She’s loud and bright and she takes up all the space in the room, with her flame-red hair and her endless imagination. You’ve never really had friends before - never had the time or the mental space to make any relationship work outside of the one that was integral to your career - but you think you could do it this time.  

With her, the city seems alive for the very first time.

It doesn’t take long for the two of you to strike out on your own. You find an office (windowless, basement floor, prone to minor earthquakes when the Metro trains rumble by) and you rent apartments nearby, and, day by day, you both work yourselves into the ground to make your shared future a reality.

.

By the end of your first year in Paris, he’s engaged.

You knew; of course you knew, that feeling of lingering dread that settled in you when you first saw those photos didn’t lie. You wonder, briefly, whether you’ll be invited to the wedding. The thought turns your stomach. Thankfully, you never get to the point where you’re considering how to politely decline an invitation to the wedding of a man you’ve known almost as long as you’ve been alive, because by the end of your third year, the engagement is called off.

You never find out the reason why. It’s his mother who tells you, just the same as it was his mother who delivered the news of his engagement. She calls you at nine in the morning to let you know, and there’s something odd in her voice - like she’s reaching for something, but doesn’t know how to ask for it. You ask her why she’s telling you this, and she can’t give you an answer; you hear her swallow her words, muffled and thick on the other end of the line. For all your life, you’ve never known Alma speechless.

He must be doing badly - truly, terribly badly - for her to reach out to you like this.

The thought stays with you, no matter how much you try to push it out of your head, and it repeats over, over, over, quietly collecting significance.

You hope he’s okay.

You don’t miss him - you don’t let yourself. It’s been three years now, and you have a career to show for it. If the glamour of the dream fades to something less appealing, if the shine of the city lights are no longer as dazzling as they are disenchanting, and the long days in the office seem more soul-destroying than they were before - well, you’re used to putting in the hard graft. It’ll be worth it in the end.

You don’t miss him, and you don’t wonder about where life has taken him, and you don’t think about the days back when you were both still kids, when you imagined that you might be forty, fifty, sixty, seeing the years out together.

But you hope he’s doing okay.

.

Six months later, his email shows up in your inbox.

Two weeks after, you’re back in Montreal.

It’s only one weekend, you tell yourself. One weekend for old times’ sake, for the debt of twenty-five years together. One weekend to know where you stand, to see how the years have changed him - whether there’s anything left of the person that you used to love.

Except one weekend becomes one week, and one week becomes you attending the Grand Prix Final, and him in your little flat in Paris, and as suddenly as your lives separated from each other, you find the broken threads weaving back together.

The years _have_ changed him. The years have changed you both - into something, perhaps, that could fit back together. He’s more patient, and you’re more honest, and above all, you’re both so _tired_ : tired of pretending that things aren’t the way they are, tired of dancing around a subject you should have settled long ago. The puzzle pieces are smooth with age, all the edges that snagged and caught worn down with the years. You could slip out of alignment or back into it with nothing but a thought.

A different sort of future unspools before you: one where it’s you and him and Natalie and Gabriel, spending day after day in the rink together, in pursuit of a singular goal. You’ve always given away too much of yourself; you’ve always stretched yourself too thin, across a hundred projects all at once, until you barely have the energy left to scrape together a peace of mind. This time, you want so badly you can hardly speak the words aloud. The thought grows and grows, until it consumes your every waking minute, until it’s not so much a want as it is a _need_. You want it all - the ugly, difficult days, shivering cold, numb fingers and bleary eyes, part and parcel with the triumph.

And you want it all with him.

But what do you say to your partner of the past three years? That you’re sorry, but you need to ask her permission for a little more selfishness? That it’s not that you don’t appreciate what she’s done for you these past years - she saved you, in more ways than you could ever count – but that there’s a siren call in your blood, and it pulls you back to someone different?

You couldn’t hurt her like that.

But you promised her you would be honest – and honesty, you know all too well, is unflinching and unkind.

So you do the impossible: you tell her the truth.  
  


* * *

  
“You’re leaving.”

The voice isn’t her own; it’s higher, lighter, and the sound pulls her back to herself. In front of her, Rose sits, still and patient as she has been for the past half an hour. Maybe it's a trick of the light, or maybe it's her own eyes, blurred and stinging with tears, but she swears there are tear tracks marking her friend's face too. Slowly, Tessa nods. She pulls Rose’s hand into hers; she can't speak, can barely fathom the words that she needs to say next.

"Okay," Rose says, her voice thick with emotion. "It's okay. I understand."

Holding hands with Rose is nothing like holding hands with Scott - her skin is soft and gentle, smooth, freckles dotting the tops of her palms - but both come with the same sense of security and comfort, uncomplicated in a way that a thousand words could never accomplish. As her friend seems to demonstrate, time and time again, there’s no judgement, only patience: an endless, vast expanse of it – and a forgiveness so deep that Tessa wonders she even has a wellspring left to draw from.

Rose's fingers squeeze tightly around Tessa’s, and Tessa squeezes back.

  
  
  



	10. Chapter 10

From the moment she accepts Scott’s offer to the moment she lands in Montreal, six months later – three massive suitcases stacked on the trolley in front of her, her phone buzzing in her pocket with a deluge of text messages from Rose, _despite_ the five-page handwritten letter her friend pressed into her hands before take-off – she’s terrified.

It’s not fear in the typical sense. Tessa knows proper fear, and knows it well; sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for the confirmation that the first surgery didn’t do what everyone said it was supposed to, knowing already, immediately, that she’ll have to do it again. That fear was all-consuming, as paralysing as her useless legs. Her insides trying to turn themselves out, lips pressed together, trying not to let the wobble in her voice give her away; that was the worst kind of fear.

This fear is more like when she was fourteen, on holiday with her family in Portugal, and her older brother had taken her cliff-diving. In hindsight, she’ll never know what made her do it. Fresh off her and Scott's move to Canton and the realisation that skating could be a serious career for them both, she was already turning down invites to go-karting parties and roller-blading on Saturdays for fear of injury. If her mother had known, she’d have had a heart attack, and probably disowned Casey from the family.

As it was, the rest of Tessa’s family remained blissfully oblivious as she clambered through bushes and over boulders, following behind her brother as he led them to a spot he’d heard about from one of his friends: a finger of rock that pushed out from the cliff edge, above water deep enough to be safe. Her brother had gone first, leapt off the rock with no more than a smile and a wink over his shoulder at her.

Then, it had been her turn.

She inched her way up to the cliff edge, step by step. Her feet were bare; she remembers the dry grass crunching underfoot, warm wind rifling through her hair. Step by step, until she felt her toes curling over the lip of the earth, and into nothingness.

Nothing below her, and nothing above. She imagined stepping off the edge of the cliff, and instead of falling, drifting up and up, like a balloon on the end of a string. Pushing herself up onto her tiptoes, she held her arms out to either side, felt the wind underneath her fingertips. No terror. Only the fear of the unknown, of anticipation; hesitating, hovering, ready to take flight.  

She leapt.  
  


* * *

  
This time, Scott meets her at the airport.

Tick one against ‘doing things right’. New and improved Tessa and Scott, healthy and functional and not in the slightest bit co-dependent and hopelessly in denial.

He’s nervous – impossibly, so - but so is she, so that’s okay. She can tell by the way he won’t shut up in the car on the drive back to his place (she’ll be staying for a week until the lease on her new flat in Montreal begins – Scott wouldn’t hear anything of her suggestion that she stayed in a hotel for the interim). His hands are everywhere: loose on the steering wheel, carding through his scruff of hair, scratching at that one spot on his jaw, the scab that never heals properly because he won’t stop picking at it.

“Have a good flight?” he asks, and “Everything go okay in Paris?”, and “Rose taking the move alright?”

He doesn’t look at her. She’s almost relieved for it. They haven’t looked at each other since she turned the corner of the arrival gate at the airport and found him without even thinking: his big, beaming smile, his wave, nearly knocking the baseball cap clean off his head in his enthusiasm – and then when she’d drawn close enough that his smile was near-blinding, they stood there, awkwardly, hands half-reaching, wanting everything and nothing all at once.

Tessa pulls her hair back behind her shoulder, over the thin strap of her shirt. “Sure. I can’t be one hundred percent certain she’s not plotting your murder, but I’m at least ninety percent.”

Scott throws a brief grin in her direction. "I'll take those odds."

“She wasn’t even mad, you know. Not even when I dumped the whole thing on her with no warning. All she wanted was for me to promise that I’d spill all the gossip about who’s the biggest diva at the rink. For the record, her money is on you, and then Natalie.”

“Me?” Scott yelps, sounding genuinely taken aback. “Patch is _right_ there to choose from, and she picks _me_?!”

“She’s never met Patch. She’s heard _all_ about you."

Scott’s eyebrows shoot upwards, into a mock-offended look that’s so achingly familiar, Tessa almost has to stop and stare for a minute.

“So much for loyalty!” he says. "Scott Moir, a diva? My reputation will be in shreds once you're done with me."

His eyebrow quirks in a weirdly suggestive way on the last sentence. Does he even realise he's doing it? His eyebrows always seemed to have a life of their own. Tessa decides that it must be an unconscious movement. It's safer that way. 

"Excuse me, but who complained for a week straight when I accidentally broke his favourite mug?"

Scott gives her an indignant frown. “That was my special good luck mug for the Leafs, and you know it! My poor boys lost the rest of that season.”

"Uh-huh," Tessa says, nodding. She waves a hand vaguely in his direction. "I rest my case."

To be perfectly truthful, Rose bears Scott no ill will whatsoever – or if she does, she’s been very good at hiding it during the past six months. Tessa wonders how much of Rose’s geniality is an innate willingness to forgive, and how much relies on the stipulation that Tessa’s stay in Montreal lasts precisely a year, and no longer.

That’s another topic she and Scott have yet to broach – what happens after.  He brought it up once, when they were hashing out logistics over hastily-exchanged emails, and then never again. It sounds illogical, like they’re both being willfully stupid about the whole arrangement, but there’s a part of her that’s hesitant to remind him there’s already an expiration date on their new venture. Of course, they both know. It’s written in her contract, the one that he signed off on – a temporary salaried position from May 2025 to 2026, long enough to cover the season of the Olympic Games in Calgary and the few months following.

A year from now, Tessa will return to Paris to pick up where she left off with Rose.

Or so the plan goes.  
  


* * *

  
Scott’s house is different than she expected.

To be honest, she doesn’t really know what she _was_ expecting – something with an egregious amount of wood panelling, maybe, with a few chickens in the front yard. There’s not even a Canadian flag in sight, which she’s sure must be a provincial offence for any Ilderton native.

The house is clean and white, generously-proportioned and located at the end of what Tessa can only describe as a perfectly typical suburban side road. Pretty, eggshell-blue shutters border large windows on the front of the house, and a stone chimney peeks over the edge of the grey, tiled roof. Trailing plants wind around the decking of an expansive front porch, the lawn lush and vibrant despite the summer heat. Tessa can’t help but think of her own balcony flowerbox back in Paris, the plant leaves crisped and curled like paper decorations.

Someone has obviously put a great deal of time and effort into maintaining this house. She can’t help but wonder who.

“Here we are,” Scott says, as they pull up on the driveway outside the house. “El Casa de Moir. Or, no, wait, what’s the French? Chateau? Is that castle? Ahh, forget it.”

He spins his car keys around his finger as he hops out of the car and collects her bags from the trunk. By the look on his face when he hauls the first one out onto the gravel, he’s forgotten just how thoroughly Tessa packs her luggage.

“Christ, Tess,” he says, huffing a breath. “What have you got in these things? Getting ready for the apocalypse?”

Tessa raises her eyebrows at him, collecting the one remaining case from the boot of the car. He’s being overdramatic, as per usual. “Just the basics. Suitcases fill up quick when you’re trying to move your whole life with you, you know.”

“Yeah, like you’re not planning to buy an entire new wardrobe anyway.”

“I never said I wasn’t. This is to keep me going for the first few weeks, before I can get into town and start filling out my wardrobe beyond the essentials.”

Scott stares at her for a moment, eyes wide, then shakes his head. “God, you’re terrifying.”

"Thank you. I'll take that as a compliment," Tessa says, with an unabashedly smug smile, and then, as Scott turns to head up the driveway and into the house: "I hope you have plenty of closet space."  
  


* * *

  
Scott’s track record with interior design is… questionable, to say the least.

Back when they were still living in Michigan, she’d once turned up at his apartment to find that his living room had become host to a collection of five, mismatched, grubby armchairs, with a strange smell that bordered on back-alley dumpster. He was far too eager to explain to her that he’d found them on the side of the road, could she _believe_ that someone was willing to give them away for free? Yes, she’d told him. Yes, she could.

For as long as she’s known him, he’s barely been able to style himself, let alone get his life together enough to decorate a house. Consequently, it’s not unreasonable for her to feel more than a little trepidation upon stepping through the front door of a entire _house_ that Scott has been given free reign over. But, to her surprise, the place is spotless. It’s even _tasteful_. The front hallway is decorated with framed family photos and keepsakes, personal but uncluttered. On a dresser by the stairs, there’s a bowl filled with nothing but smooth, shiny pebbles, the kind you might see in a housing catalogue or a showroom – certainly not in the hallway of a house owned by Scott Moir.

Surely this house cannot be owned by the same man who decorated every square inch of his bathroom in Montreal with newspaper cuttings of the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup. Tessa refuses to believe it.

“It’s pretty nice, eh?” Scott says, as he shuffles down the hallway, tossing his keys onto the dresser. “And big enough that we won’t be tripping over each other all the time. I remember how much you hate having roommates. Or sharing, in general.”

He’s teasing, but Tessa ignores it. She turns her head back and forth, taking stock. “It’s clean.”

Scott pauses in the middle of rolling her suitcases into the living room. “Yeah, it is,” he says, with a look that’s halfway between amusement and offense. “What were you expecting? I’m not gonna put you up in some den of squalor. I know how to treat a guest right.”

“I have to admit, I’m a little impressed. Just a little.”

“You weren’t around yesterday,” Scott says. “I was a cleaning _machine_. No photo frame undusted, no shower unclogged. All in a day’s work for an everyday hero.”

Tessa distinctly remembers having to stage an intervention on four separate occasions to get Scott to clean up his apartment, but she elects not to bring that up. “Come on, then,” she says, snapping the handle of her suitcase back into the frame. “Inspection time.”

Scott raises his eyebrows. “Inspection? Who are you, my mother?”

Tessa shakes her head. “Nope, just nosy. I want to see what newspaper clippings you're using as wallpaper in your bathroom these days.”

“Hey! I like to give the people something to enjoy while they’re doing their business.”

“That’s gross.”

“ _You_ brought it up!”

“Only because I wish I could forget it. What did Alma say when she saw the photos, something about disowning you if you thought that was going to happen to the house in London you were doing with your brothers?”

“Hah. Our London project turned out just fine, thank you very much.”

“Oh, did it finally get finished?”

“…”

“Scott… please tell me you’re not _still_ working on that house.”

“…How about that tour then, eh, T?”  
  


* * *

  
Scott’s grand tour could do with some work. For starters, it’s over and done with in the space of five minutes – hardly worth the price of admission. He’s an engaging host, pointing out trivial snippets of information like which chair makes the most satisfying creak when you sit in it (kitchen dining table, leftmost) and which window lets you sneak out up onto the roof of the back porch to watch the sun set (guest bathroom, not that Scott would _ever_ condone such an activity).

Tessa notes a couple of key takeaways of her own.

She’s not sure how she feels about the carpet choice for the living room. It’s a strange shade of brown, somewhere between beige and mud-brown, and entirely disgusting. Most people would find it off-putting, but to Tessa, it's almost a relief; there  _is_ still a small part of Scott - however much he's learned to compensate for the remaining ninety percent - that has absolutely no idea what he's doing with interior design. (The carpet is also very soft, so there's that. She buries her socked toes into the fibres. Bare feet seems too personal - is that a strange thing to get hung up on, given that over the course of their career/relationship, Scott has seen her in every stage of undress?). 

His kitchen is beautiful. It’s immediately obvious that this room is the heart of Scott’s home; all the furniture has a well-loved feel, worn and aged but, above all, treated with care. The dark wood countertops are faded in places, and the paint on the olive green cupboards is a little chipped here and there, but the room feels lived in, alive itself – more so than any of the other rooms she’s shown on her tour.

Though there are a few recipe books propped up on the countertop, most of the space is reserved for a collection of thick ring-bound notebooks, in varying rainbow shades. One notebook has been left open by the hob, and Tessa peers down at it. Scrawled in Scott’s messy handwriting (a teacher once told him he writes like a drunken chicken, and he’s been adamant to keep it that way ever since) is a full page of instructions for making paella. Pencil markings here and there adjust recipe quantities and timings. It’s evident that he’s spent a lot of time perfecting this dish – probably more time than Tessa has spent cooking in her entire life.

She turns to him with raised eyebrows. “Been keeping yourself busy?”

Scott gives a sheepish grin, his hands jammed into the pockets of his slacks. “Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you try it! It’s a great source of creativity. Stick a record on, get the pan bubbling, choreography just comes to me. Look-“

He points to a tiny scribble next to his instructions to add vegetables to the pan. Tessa squints. Two stick figures twirl in the margins of the page, arms akimbo in some complicated choreographic move.

“Hmm, yeah. I see,” she says. “The smaller stick figure is decapitating the larger stick figure in a fit of passion. It’s genius.”

“No, those are _arms_ , not legs-“ Scott starts, sounding a little exasperated, before Tessa snorts a laugh. “Oh,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “ _Oh_. I see how it is.”

He flips his notebook closed and turns away with a dramatic flourish.

“Wait,” Tessa calls after him, still giggling. “I didn’t get the chance to see how it ended. Who was left standing? This is life or death, Scott!”

“Just for that, we’re skipping the breakfast nook.”

He’s not lying, either – they skim past the rooms on the second floor: a study, which Tessa suspects is rarely used for its intended purpose given that it looks like the site of an NHL merch store explosion; another small sitting room, overlooking the expansive back gardens of the house; a games room, complete with a pool table and a sorry-looking darts board; a guest bathroom at the end of the hallway, introduced as hers for the duration of her stay.

There’s only one closed door. The door is entirely unremarkable – as plain and solid as all the other doors he’s pushed open to let her wander through. But she bites her tongue, and doesn’t ask.

For the last stop on the tour, they ascend into the attic, up a spiral staircase tucked behind a cupboard door. Tessa can’t help herself; she gasps as soon as she emerges into the room. The room is neat and tidy and _light_ – there’s so much light everywhere, spilling through the circular window at the front of the room, through skylights set into the roof, the wooden planks of the walls washed in golden sun. A host of brightly-patterned cushions crowd a window seat underneath the circular window, and a small vase of tulips rests on a desk at the side of the room. The attic narrows towards the back, the eaves of the roof angling into a point above the bed; soft fabrics of blue and sea-green and lilac are strung between the sloping walls, creating a makeshift canopy.

It’s more beautiful than Tessa feels like she has any right to.

Scott allows her a few moments to take in her surroundings, then turns to her and spreads his hands wide. “Here we go,” he says. “Sorry about the climb, I know it’s a fair few flights. This place is probably more rustic than maybe you’re used to, but-“

“No, it’s beautiful,” Tessa interrupts. “Really. The whole house is. You did a great job with it.”

Scott gives a genuine smile. “Thanks, T. It kept me busy right after we retired, that’s for sure. Idle hands are the devil’s tools, and all that.” He scratches a hand across the back of his neck, turning to take in his surroundings – as if he’s seeing it all for the first time again. “Y’know, out of all the rooms in this house – and don’t let the rest of the house hear me say this – but of every room, I think this is my favourite. Doing it up was a proper family effort. Me and Danny and Charlie, we spent an entire evening putting up the canopy for the bed. And the sheets, I let my niece pick those out.”

“Your niece has very sophisticated taste,” Tessa says. “If it’d been mine, I’d have ended up with rainbows and unicorns.”

“The rug on the floor, my mum knitted that…”

“Don’t tell me the tulips on the desk are fake and break my heart,” Tessa deadpans.

“Nope,” Scott says, popping the syllable with relish. “Unlike _some,_ I allow life to flourish. Taken from my own garden, those are.”

“Cooking, home improvement, _and_ gardening? Leave some hope for us mere mortals, please.”

Scott grins at her – and maybe it’s the light washing in through the porthole window, warm and golden, but his smile seems somehow brighter than it has ever been before, brighter even than she remembers it – and before she’s even aware of her own body, there’s a grin on her face too. It’s like muscle memory. He smiles, and she smiles back; no more something she can control than to command the waves not to break on the shoreline. One calls, and the other responds.

In the end, she thinks, his energy has always been hers. He holds his feelings closer to the surface, allows them to be more recognisable. She can sense the nerves trembling underneath his skin – knows that if she could reach out and touch him, she’d find his pulse hammering a mile a minute. But there’s hope there too, and eagerness, and all manner of things that make her feel like she’s fifteen again, high on the flush of her first crush.  

He always did have the most beautiful smile she’d ever seen.  
  


* * *

  
In a feat that she suspects is more to impress her than out of much goodwill, Scott single-handedly hauls all three of her suitcases up the stairs, before leaving her to settle in. ‘Settling in’, in Tessa’s case, means catching up on the torrent of text messages she’s received from Rose over the past twelve hours.

She tries to get through them, she really does; she perches on the edge of the bed, readies herself for the long haul. But when the first message reads:

_Safe flight, my absent spouse. Have a good time in Canada – but not too good, you hear me? They can’t have you back, not even if the sex is mindblowing. Xoxo_

Followed a few minutes later by:

_Of course, I respect the sacrosanctity of your personal life. But you better tell me about all the sex that I know you’re going to be having._

And then:

_In detail._

There’s nothing more she can do but fire back a rolled-eyes emoji (followed, two minutes later, by a quick heart), and turn off her phone. Rose evidently has far too much time on her hands without Tessa to harass in person.

Tessa makes her way downstairs, past the door that she wasn’t allowed to enter (still closed), down the staircase. The walls of the staircase are lined with family photos, and she trails her fingers across the wooden frames. They’re all Moirs – Danny and Charlie and Alma, with silvery streaks in her hair, and countless nieces and nephews, clustered like bean sprouts. God, they’re all so grown up now. She remembers when they were born, Scott showing her all the photos of his newborn family member, so excited he was practically jumping out of his skin. They were all pink, shrivelled things, impossibly small - and so _ugly._ But Scott had been ecstatic, giving her hourly updates on little Harry's first pee, making plans to go and visit the hospital, calling his brothers and putting her on the end of the line too, letting her fumble her way through an entire conversation about newborn babies and childbirth. 

Look at them now, school photos all arranged in a haphazard little cluster along Scott's staircase. Proper human beings. 

She wonders if Scott is bitter that his brothers’ kids have already almost overtaken him in height. Probably not. He’d be the “cool” uncle who could lift them all above his head, toss them in the air and catch them again. Even the most timid child wouldn’t be afraid with him, she knows. There's something about Scott – a simple trustworthiness – that makes you certain, when he says he’ll be there to catch you, he’ll be there, come hell or high water.

He never dropped her, not once. Not in competition, not in practice, not even off-ice when they were working through a new lift for the very first time. If ever her hands slipped on the unfamiliarity of a new position, or her weight shifted out from underneath her, he’d be there, ready to absorb her impact. There was nowhere in the world she felt as secure as when she was up on his shoulders – balanced as precariously as you like, centre of gravity impossibly off-axis – safe in the knowledge that no matter how she came down, it would be with his arm wrapped solidly around her.

She misses that. She wonders if he misses it too.

It’s strange, this whole thing - to have him in the same house as her, so close and familiar, yet changed in ways she can’t fathom. She wants to know what he’s thinking about, constantly, wants to know whether the same memories come to light for him as they do for her. Does the fear exist for him too? Is there doubt in his head as well, or is it only her who seems to second-guess everything she says? He wouldn’t stop talking in the car on the drive here, too loud, overcompensating. It’s his defense mechanism, she knows – to keep going, and going, and going until the moment is bypassed completely. So maybe he’s as terrified as she is.

She wishes she could ask him all the questions she wants answered; she wants it so badly she can barely put a voice to it. But this isn’t one of their therapy sessions, and they don’t have the luxury of an intermediary to soften the sting of their words for them, to translate jealousy and hurt into “How did that make you feel, Tessa?”, and “Why do you think it happened that way, Scott?”. Her questions would be weapons of war.

Her hand drops away from the picture frame, and she shakes her head.

One day, maybe.

For now, she follows the sound of television to the living room, where she finds him.

Scott sits on the end of the sofa, his back to her. His arms are stretched out along the top, his fingers toying absentmindedly with a small tear in the fabric. Above his head, she can see the television switched on to the news channel; the headlines cycle past on a ticker reel, mundane stories about tax rates and funding cuts and celebrity divorce. Standard fare for 24-hour news channels.

Her feet push against the little strip of wood that marks the threshold of the room.

“Is this what passes for entertainment nowadays?” she says, as she leans against the doorframe. “Standards have really slipped while I was away.”

At the sound of her voice, Scott’s hand stills instantly on the rip in the sofa. He tips his head back over his shoulder, fixing her with a lazy smile. “Hey, she lives! Thought I’d have to come and rescue you from your tower before long. The view from the penthouse suite that entrancing?”

Tessa folds her arms across her chest. “Was the three-tier fountain in your neighbour’s driveway already there when you moved in, or did you genuinely make the decision to share a garden fence with someone who paves over all the grass in their front yard?”

A look of disgust passes across Scott’s face. “Ugh. Don’t remind me. I tell you, T, the people here are insane. The other day I saw one of them trimming his lawn with nail scissors. _Nail scissors._ And you know the worst part? I actually stood there and took the time to consider whether that was something I should be doing too.”

“That’s what you get for voluntarily moving to the suburbs. Don't say I didn't warn you.”

Scott gives a short huff of laugher, and swings his arms down from the top of the sofa. “Gee, that’s what I missed. A good old dose of patented Tessa Virtue sympathy. C’mon, stop lurking in the doorway.” He pats the sofa next to him. “Help me make this couch less depressingly empty.”

Tessa sighs, making a show of her reluctance. “Well, since you asked so nicely.”

As she comes over to join him, and sinks back into the sofa cushions with a content sigh, the thought passes through her head that she might genuinely never make it back up again. But she takes a moment to settle herself in – cross-legged like always, ever since she was a little kid – and she doesn’t worry too hard about how she’ll heave herself back out. Scott will just have to give her a push.  

Scott looks over at her, one eyebrow creeping upwards. “Still never learned how to sit properly?”

She tilts her chin up and pulls one leg further across the other, obstinately. “No, and I refuse to. Just wait until I’m eighty and cartwheeling around the place, while you can’t even touch your toes. Then you’ll be wishing you did more than sprawl every limb across its own cushion.”

“Aha,” Scott says, with a grin, leaning in closer - close enough that his shoulder brushes against hers. She stiffens. “Doesn’t mean so much if I could never touch my toes in the first place.”

Tessa’s eyes narrow. “Liar.”

“Nothing but the truth crosses these lips, I’ll have you know.”

“Mm. I don’t think so.”

He quirks an eyebrow at her. “Not convinced?”

Scott’s body radiates warmth; she imagines it like liquid sunlight, bleeding through his shirt, across her arm where his skin touches hers – it prickles at her, turns every nerve ending to a state of hyper-alertness. In her defence, that’s why she doesn’t give much thought to the next words that come out of her mouth.

“No,” she says, promptly. “I think you’re much more flexible than you give yourself credit for.”

He blinks – once, twice, like he’s rebooting.

And she realises what she’s just said.

It’s curious that, despite the sudden, intense wave of embarrassment and the wish that the ground would open up and swallow her whole, or maybe that she could just wither and die from shame on the very spot, it’s almost worth it for Scott’s reaction.

Never in her life has she seen him blush – not when he was eleven years old and tripped off the podium at their first major competition, not when he was sixteen and their coaches made all the kids at the rink sit through two hours of a safe sex talk, and Tessa had wanted to melt into her plastic chair when he'd passed the basket of free condoms to her with a wink. He’s always managed to laugh anything off, water off a duck’s back. Now his cheeks fill with colour – a brilliant pink, the flush raised against his skin. Tessa only wishes she’d had longer to appreciate it, because within a few seconds, he bolts up from the sofa, mumbles “I’m gonna go make a grilled cheese. Want one? Great. Be back in a minute,” and disappears out of the door.

Well.

Foot, meet mouth. She’s ready to board the next flight back to Paris now.

When Scott finally returns after quietly self-destructing in the kitchen, they’ll have to settle for small talk. His opinion on the Cold War and its place in modern society seems like a safe place to start, all things considered.

In the meantime, she busies herself with sorting out a better alternative for the night than watching the news channel and engaging in some truly terrible flirting. There’s no banking on Scott to have Netflix; if it were up to him, he’d still have a VHS player hooked up to his TV. Luckily, she discovers that he _does_ have an extensive collection of DVDs stacked in the cupboard underneath the television. He’s got them arranged all wrong – by which she means there’s no discernable order to the cupboard whatsoever – but she’ll work with what she’s been given. Three rows back, placed the wrong way round with its spine pointing towards the back of the cupboard, she finds what she’s looking for.

A few moments later, Scott appears back in the room.

“Here we go,” he says, putting two plates down on the table. “One grilled cheese for you. Nice and simple.”

He sounds much more together than before; at the very least, his words are coming out separately rather than slurred together into one barely intelligible sound. His cheeks are still a little pink, but she’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say it’s from the heat of the stove.

Scooping up her plate, she settles herself back in the sofa. “Thanks! It looks great.” The familiar smell of heart-stopping quantities of melted cheese wafts up from the plate in her lap. “Smells great too. Mmm.”

She’s filling time, really, waiting until he notices what she’s picked for the evening’s entertainment. He hovers by the table for a second, trying to look anywhere but at her as she brings the grilled cheese to her mouth and takes a bite, until his eyes finally drop to the table. More specifically, the DVD she’s placed there.

Swallowing her mouthful, Tessa grins, catlike.

“No,” Scott says, flatly. “No way. Not in this household.”

“Now, I found this at the very back of your cupboard,” Tessa begins, with a look of deep contemplation on her face. “And I just couldn’t imagine why it would be there at all, unless there was some part of you that _wanted_ this DVD to be found, so that one day someone would _force_ you to watch it and save you admitting that, actually, there is a small part of you that really enjoys Jane Austen.”

“Wrong,” Scott says. “It’s been at the back of my cupboard ever since I had a cupboard to put it in.”

She’s got him on the defensive already, his arms folded across his chest. This will be far too easy a victory.

A small smile curls at the edge of Tessa’s lips. “You know what this says to me, Scott? You valued it enough to keep it safe and secure for all that time. All those years, you held onto this when you could just as easily have thrown it in the trash. I think that deserves a watch, don’t you?”

“Funnily enough, no. I don’t.”

The set of his jaw is steadfast, but his fingers have begun to drum on the sides of his arms.  

“A pity,” Tessa sighs, exaggerated. She lets her hands drop into her lap (the effect ruined somewhat by the grilled cheese plate balanced there). “And here I was, believing that you knew how to look after your house guests. I suppose at some point in our lives, we are all disappointed.”

It’s not his fault that twenty years of therapy taught her to read him better than her own mind. But really, she thinks, he should know by now that when he gives her that stern little look that dimples the skin between his eyebrows, all she has to do is smile up at him and she has him, utterly and completely.

Checkmate.

“Put the damn thing on,” he grumbles, throwing himself onto the couch next to her. He looks like he wants to lob a pillow at her – to be quite honest, she’s surprised he hasn’t yet.

Instead, she gives him a satisfied little smirk as she scoops up the DVD from the table and places the disk into the DVD player. “With pleasure.”

As the opening credits of Pride and Prejudice begin to play, she hears from behind her, muttered under his breath with the weariness of a man who has been forced to sit through this same movie eight times before: “Giving you guest privileges was a mistake. I should have known you’d go power mad.”

“Yup,” she hums, happily, as she settles herself back onto the sofa beside him. “You should.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come yell at me over @virtueoso on Tumblr, where I procrastinate writing fic by crying about semi-retired ice dancers. Big thanks to my lovely beta, Marcia, and to all the regular commentators. Your enthusiasm for this story is a huge motivator. Thank you for being the most wonderful audience to write for!


	11. Chapter 11

On the first morning of her new life in Montreal, bright and early (too early) one Monday morning, Tessa remembers why she and Scott never shared an apartment before.

He’s chirpy first thing in the morning.

And _particularly_ first thing in the morning, with her eyes still bleary, crusts of sleep drool hastily scrubbed from her face, generally bemoaning whatever reason has given her cause to be up before ten a.m., Tessa _hates_ chirpy.

“Morning,” Scott says cheerily, as she enters the kitchen. He digs into his bowl of cornflakes with a genial smile, elbows propped up on the countertop. It doesn’t help her mood at all that he looks as fresh-faced and ready to face the day as he did twenty years ago.

“Uh-huh,” is the most she can manage in response. Her hair feels like a haystack on the top of her head, despite her best efforts to wrangle it into a ponytail before going to sleep. Not that she remembers going to sleep. She’s a little hazy on the specifics after the one-hour mark of Pride and Prejudice. Scott chucked his grilled cheese crusts at the screen during the proposal scene; that much she knows.

“Cereal’s in the middle cupboard over there,” he says, indicating a row of cupboards underneath the sink. “Bowls are just above. Milk’s in the fridge. Make yourself at home.”

She shuffles around the kitchen in silence, fixing herself a bowl of cereal and sitting down at the table in the corner of the room. Scott comes to join her, his cereal bowl clinking on the wood as he sets it down.

“Please don’t talk to me,” she says, before he can open his mouth. “I’m not ready for human interaction yet.”

There’s a scraping noise as a mug of coffee is pushed across the table towards her. She glances up in surprise, into a pair of amused brown eyes. The look on Scott’s face tells her that he’s enjoying watching her stumble through six o’clock in the morning far too much. If he keeps that up, she’s going to bring up the time he got wasted off a mix of Patrick’s ice wine and dubious Russian vodka, and ended up scaling a lamppost in the Sochi Olympic Village.

“Come on, you really think I’d forget Tessa Virtue 101?” he says. “Rule numero uno, no conversation without coffee. Triple espresso, no sugars. Your standard rocket fuel. All ready to go.”

Slowly, she clasps her hands around the mug and pulls it towards her, peers into it, one eyebrow raised in suspicion. Yup, black as tar and smelling just as strong. Scott watches her, his nose wrinkling in disgust as she takes a cautious sip – and then another, and another, drinking as fast as she possibly can.

“I dunno how you can drink that stuff, T. It smells like rat poison.”

“Exactly,” she says, as she drains the last dregs from the mug and sets it down on the table with a clink. “Just the thing for six in the morning. Thanks.”

For all the many fucked up things that amount of caffeine may do to her body, it does the job at waking her up. Probably by frying all the neurons in her brain to within an inch of their life, but hey. They’re sturdy little things. They’ll be fine.

She picks up her cereal spoon. “Okay. You want to talk about work? In the interests of maintaining actual legitimacy and everything. We should sort out what we’re doing before we head to the rink.”

“Sure,” Scott nods, clasping his hands together atop the table. “Work.”

In the time it takes for Tessa to finish her bowl of cereal, they go over the details for the season, confirming what they’ve already discussed by email: Tessa will handle choreographing the free dance while Marie-France takes the rhythm dance. They haven’t settled on music yet. Unlike last season, the choice of music will be up to her (pending Natalie and Gabriel’s approval). Scott assures her that he’ll be around to help with technical guidelines for the program. She’s brushed up on the technical handbook in the six months since his offer, but memorising all two-hundred and sixty-eight pages is a feat beyond even her perseverance.  

“So, what’s the rhythm this year?” Tessa asks, twirling her spoon in her empty bowl. “Finnstep, right?”

“Yeah, it’s the Finnstep,” Scott nods. “I kinda hoped they’d choose one of the new patterns, but I guess you can’t beat the classics.”

Natalie and Gabriel will suit the Finnstep perfectly; Tessa can imagine the pattern in her head already, the steps crisp and sparkling – like champagne, Marina used to tell her.

“It was always fun performing that one,” she says, and then, inclining her head towards him with a small smile: “Even when you were blowing kisses at our competition in the warm up.”

Scott grins. “Gotta keep ‘em sweet, T. I had to get it all out of my system before we had to be straight-laced and boring for the free.” He tilts his chair back, stretching his arms up behind his head with a sigh. “Man, The Seasons really put everything else into perspective. Guess we can be grateful for that much, eh? Nothing was ever that terrible again.”

“It _was_ pretty dire.”

“Just “dire”?” Scott parrots, incredulously. “Tess, she had us pledging allegiance to an imaginary flag in the last five seconds. I tell you, I watch that footage and I forget that we did actually earn three gold medals. Hell, I forget that we spent an entire month working with an acting coach just so I could stand there and gawp at the cameras like I was trying to catch flies.”

Tessa tries not to burst into laughter as he re-enacts the situation. It doesn’t help that his expression is uncannily accurate.

“Come on,” she says, reaching across the table to tug uselessly at the hand Scott has pressed to his chest in dedication to his country. “You weren’t _that_ bad. Canadian patriots everywhere fell about in swoons of love, I’m sure.”

“I always fucked up the Olympic endings, Tess. Always. Mahler and Seasons, two for two.”

“You learned by 2018, though,” Tessa grins. “There’s hope for us all.”

Scott smiles, his grip loosening on his chest – and suddenly the hand that Tessa’s been pulling at for the last half a minute isn’t resisting any more. His hand falls to the table with hers, and her fingers slip loosely through his, and when she pictured how this morning might go, one arm stretched awkwardly far across the breakfast table so she can hold hands with Scott was not on the list.

At this point she doesn’t know if it would be more awkward to keep holding his hand or to take hers away. Her cheeks are beginning to redden – is she thirty or thirteen? – and she wishes that someone would do something like knock over a carton of milk, so they’d have some kind of excuse to break this strange tension that keeps pushing its way to the surface whenever they’re in a room together for longer than twenty minutes.

She knows what Rose would call it.

Scott makes a funny sort of noise that’s halfway between a cough and a laugh, and pushes his chair back to stand up. He pats her hand quickly before letting go.

“Time’s a-ticking,” he says, by way of explanation. “Better not be late for the first day, or else Patrice will have our heads.”

She doesn’t point out the fact that he won’t meet her eyes, or that his cheeks are suspiciously bright, or that he’s wielding his spoon like he’s about to fend off her attentions with breakfast cutlery.

It’s going to be a long week.  
  


* * *

   
Whoever decided that the first day of operations with the new team should be a series of team-building exercises evidently forgot that they were dealing with four hyper-competitive athletes and ex-athletes. There’s nothing remotely relaxing about the six hours they spend in the Gadbois car park, trying not to get run over while constructing a series of increasingly complex plots to sabotage each other’s activities.

The first mistake was Scott’s idea to award points to the team who “builds trust better than the other team”. The second was to insist on boys vs girls. It’s Natalie who suggests popping all the bubbles in the bubble-wrap that Scott and Gabriel ensconce their egg in (ready to be dropped out of a second-floor window, the winner being the team whose egg survives the fall). All things considered, the look on Scott’s face when his hopes and dreams meet a gloopy, yolky grave on the asphalt of the parking lot is worth the fifteen minutes spent distracting him in the hallway outside the dance studio, while Natalie systematically pops every single bubble she can reach.

The subsequent exercise doesn’t go quite so well.

“Whoops, Tess, there goes your foot,” Scott calls across the parking lot. “Blood everywhere but don’t worry, it’s only a flesh wound.”

“Shut up, Scott!” Natalie yells back. “Don’t listen to him, Tessa. You’re doing great. Keep walking forwards – a little bit to your right now – okay, yes, perfect, keep going in that direction. Shuffle left, there’s a rubber duck in your way.”

“A _mine_ , Natalie, a _mine_.”

“Oh, I’m _sorry_ , Scott,” Natalie replies, sounding not in the least apologetic. “Correction - there’s a rubber duck mine in your way, take a big step up and over and you’re good.”

Tessa can’t help but think her performance in the task would be significantly improved if she wasn’t dealing with a blindfold that seems a shake of her head away from falling down around her neck. Crevices of light peek over the top of the thin fabric; she has to close her eyes to avoid the temptation to look.

Maybe she should have asked Scott to re-tie the blindfold tighter around her eyes, but given how badly his hands trembled the first time, she’s reluctant to put him through that ordeal again.

“Watch it, Tess,” Scott calls. “Your right leg is looking real vulnerable over there, I’d be careful if I were you.”

“I’m not listening,” she says, firmly, and continues to inch her way forwards. “You can’t misdirect me.”

“Actually, um, Tessa, you might want to-“ Natalie starts.

Tessa’s right leg thuds into something hard and solid. She stops.

“Shit.”

“Kaboom!” comes Scott’s reply. She doesn’t need to see his face to know there’s a shit-eating grin plastered all over it. “Someone’s buying lunch.”  
  


* * *

  
Having eventually accepted second place in the inaugural Gadbois Team Trust Championships, Tessa and her young partner-in-crime foot the bill for the meal that afternoon. Officially, it’s a team meeting to discuss plans for the upcoming season. Unofficially, they make the most of the off-season diet by trying all of Tessa’s favourite pastries at the café round the corner. Scott even breaks out a day planner, which is by far the most shocking thing he’s done yet.

“So looking ahead, we’ve probably got six major competitions to prepare for: two Grand Prix assignments and the Final, Nationals, and then the Olympics, with the possibility of Worlds after,” Scott says, counting each one off on his fingers. “Now I know it’s early days, but how do you guys feel about going to Autumn Classic in September? It’ll be a push to get ready in time, especially with choreography only just starting, but it’s a great chance to get feedback on your programs from the judges. Given that we’ll be aiming for you to peak that little bit earlier for the Olympics, it makes sense to get things shipshape as soon as possible.”

Natalie pauses in her quest to shred a perfectly fine pain au raisin into bite size chunks, and turns to Gabriel. He shrugs, nodding.

“Sure,” Gabriel says. “That sounds fine. We still have, what, four months until then? That’s doable. Right, Nat?”

“Mh-hmm. If you’re good for it, I am too.”

Scott nods, and pencils a date in the planner. “Okay, great. I’ll talk to Patch, check what the other teams are doing for travel.”

“Did you have any ideas about music for the free?” Tessa interjects. “I’ve been playing around with a few pieces but if there’s anything you two would particularly like to do, just let me know. It’s your first Olympics, after all. We want a program that’s going to represent who you are as a team, music that makes you feel something when you skate to it. And, I mean, Scott – you’ve coached these two since they were juniors, you know their style much better than I do. What do you think we should be steering towards?”

“I’d quite like to do something classical,” Natalie mumbles, around a mouthful of pastry. “We’ve done modern stuff for the past few seasons,” – her eyes dart quickly across to Scott – “not that I don’t enjoy it, it’d just be nice to have a bit of a change. I think it could set us apart, you know? When everyone else is doing the same thing, we can be a bit different.”

Gabriel nods. “Classical would be nice.”

Scott’s silence is telling. He chews slowly on the end of his pencil for a few, long moments, the lines of his jaw tensing.

Tessa understands his reticence. Once you have a certain look, a style of movement attached to you, it can be dangerous to subvert expectations with something different. She’s seen it time and time again; change is incredibly difficult to pull off successfully, and even more difficult to convince the judges to go along with. But then, she thinks, if she and Scott had never tried anything new, they would never had had success in Pyeongchang. And besides even the medals, they never would have found fulfilment in the daily grind of training if they’d not pushed themselves out of their comfort zone.

“It’s not that I don’t agree,” Scott says, slowly. “But I’d be careful about trying to overhaul your image, in an Olympic year especially.” He examines the pair sat opposite. “If this is something you guys really want to do, we can try it. You two need to be the ones driving your own career. I’m not going to take this decision away from you. I just want you to know that it could be risky.”

“How about this,” Tessa says, leaning forwards. “I’ll work on a classical program for now, but I’ll keep a modern one in reserve, in case we run into obstacles with the first program. If everything goes horribly wrong, or we get to Autumn Classic and we’re still not happy with the classical, we can swap the modern one in. That way, we’ll always have a backup.”

Scott’s mouth twists into a frown. “That’s a lot of work, Tess, are you sure-“

“It’ll stop me from sitting around the house all day, I’ll be grateful for it.”

He looks at her, a concerned expression on his face. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be so-“

“Scott,” she says, in a tone that brooks no argument. “It’ll be fine. I came here to work. Let me work.”

She can see him tense up, the line of his shoulders tightening, like he’s about to fight it – to push on and on, until he has her in a place that would make him comfortable. One, she imagines, where she gets plenty of sleep and remains stress-free, and puts in half of the hours that he does. But that’s not what she signed up for, and he knows it – as well as he knows that trying to saddle her with anything less would be an insult.

He gives her a last uneasy look, and then sighs. “Well, alright then. But don’t run yourself into the ground over it. Because I know you, T, and given half the chance, you will.”

“Promise,” she says, her voice softening. “I promise.”

Scott still doesn’t look wholly satisfied, but he nods.

From across the table, Natalie pipes up. “You really shouldn’t bother arguing with Tessa, you know. She wins every time.”

Tessa stifles a grin.

“Oi you,” Scott says, turning his gaze from her, finally, to fix Natalie with a stern look. “You’ve only met Tessa three times.”

Natalie shakes her head. “I’ve seen enough to know already. You’re way out of your depth.”

“It’s true,” Gabriel adds. “She talks circles around you.”

A small laugh bubbles out of Tessa – but she snatches it back when Scott gives her a baleful glare. She raises her eyebrows silently at him, shoulders shrugging – _what? It’s not my fault you make it far too easy for me._

He tilts his head back at her, raises an eyebrow to match – and they’re doing that thing, Tessa realises – the one where they don’t need words to speak, the one where the flick of an eyebrow is enough to convey mood and meaning. They fell back into it without even thinking. She wonders when it started again. Was there a conscious moment where she made the choice, or, as always seems to happen with Scott, was it gone one day and there the next, as though it had always been?  
  


* * *

  
It becomes easy to settle into a routine. If she thought more about it, it might scare her - the smoothness with which she fits right back into the life she left. Her first full week of work passes in the blink of an eye: mornings spent training with Scott and the kids, helping them warm up and work on basic elements, getting her eye back for how Natalie and Gabriel move across the ice. Her afternoons are spent almost exclusively in the dance studio – the smallest one, in the very back corner of the building, with the shitty air conditioning that Tessa swears hasn’t been fixed since she and Scott used to run hip-hop choreography all those years ago. It took her a few days of research, but she’s finally managed to settle on a classical piece that both fits Natalie and Gabriel’s energy, and ticks all the boxes for the ISU’s requirements. For four hours a day, Clair de Lune plays on repeat in the tiny, sweltering studio, and Tessa hammers out the basics of the choreography.

Her evenings are spent in the rink. It’s the only time she can get to practice alone; the two ice pads at Gadbois are busy almost 24/7, but Tessa manages to convince Marie-France to lend her a spare key so she can lock up after everyone else is finished. It also means she gets the last hour on the ice by herself - pock-marked and trashed by half a day’s practice, but private ice nonetheless. Scott never asks her about it. He always looks like he wants to, when she stumbles into his living room and flops down onto the sofa, her kit bag still slung over her shoulder. He watches her, quietly, and she pretends that she doesn’t notice.

“Long day?” he says, and she’ll sigh “The longest,” and they’ll sit in silence until Tessa heaves herself up to her room and gets changed.

She always makes sure to come back down in time for Jeopardy.

Or, to be correct, she always makes sure to come back down in time to utterly destroy Scott at Jeopardy. For as harmonious as the rest of her week at Scott’s has been so far, it all gets rather heated at six p.m. in front of the flatscreen TV; tempers flare, voices raise, and Tessa always, _always_ wins.

“What does that make it now?” Tessa says smugly, burrowing her cold feet under Scott’s leg and grinning as he flinches away. “Six-nil?”

“I’m only letting you win ‘cause it’s your last few days here,” he says, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh? And what about the other five times I won, was that also because it was my last few days? Because I distinctly remember winning on Monday… and then Tuesday, and Wednesday, and-“

“Guest hospitality is very important.”

Tessa rolls her eyes and pelts him with a cushion. (Sofa-based warfare has become their go-to ever since Tuesday evening, when Tessa attempted to cook dinner for them both, and the look on Scott’s face, half-pain, half-disgust, all attempting to be enthusiastic as he chewed on a corner of the steak she’d blackened beyond recognition, was too much for her to bear. So she threw a cushion at him instead. That got rid of both the steak _and_ the look on his face.)

“What if I imposed upon you for another week, would you still use that excuse?” she says, as her cushion goes sailing towards him. He plucks it out of the air before it can make impact.

“I dunno,” Scott says, and he sets the cushion down on the sofa beside him, suddenly serious. “Are you planning on sticking around to find out?”

Tessa shrugs. “My apartment is empty now, so I can move in any time. It would be a waste of money not to… and I could stop living out of my suitcase. Having a closet again would definitely be nice.”

“Hey, you _have_ a closet upstairs, you just choose not to use it.”

“I’m sorry. It’s a very lovely closet,” she says, with a small smile. “But it’s not right for me to take advantage of you. I should be in a place of my own, let you get back to the usual things you do in your bachelor pad. Drink milk straight from the carton, clip your toenails in the living room. All that gross single male stuff.”

He chuckles. “Gee, it’s good to know that you have such a high opinion of me.”

"Pleasure," she grins back, before adding: "No, but really. We need to have our own spaces. It's important."

She doesn't tell him about how the other possibility plays in her mind like a stuck record: the option of simply staying here, settling into their routine of watching Jeopardy every night, eating dinner in comfortable quiet, coffee ready and waiting on the table when she pulls herself downstairs the next morning. It wouldn’t be a terrible life. 

Scott sighs. “I know, I know,” he says. “You can’t stay. You need to go.” But he tips his head back against the top of the sofa, won’t look at her.

“I do like it here,” she says. “Your place is lovely, and living with you is –  is fun. I was so sure I’d be sick of it within the day, or you’d get fed up with me, but it hasn’t been like that at all. It’s been really nice. Genuinely.”

“Thanks, Tess.”

He still won’t meet her eyes. It’s absurd, she knows it is, to feel the sting of his avoidance like a physical pain, but she can’t help it. She’s never known life without this; a strange awareness of a body that is not hers, always hovering at the edge of her senses. It’s what she’s been trained for since she was seven years old - although thinking about it in that sense makes her brain do funny sorts of leaps to avoid becoming bogged down in the weirdness of it all. At any one moment in time, she’s perfectly aware of Scott and his presence in the space around her.

For instance, she knows, right now, even though he’s stretched one arm so casually along the side of the sofa, his other hand scratching at the side of his neck, that his knee trembles almost imperceptibly, and the muscles at his jaw keep tightening and relaxing. He’s on edge, and trying desperately not to let her see.

It’s too bad she knows him better than he knows himself.

“Hey. Give me your hand,” she says, abruptly.

He looks at her, surprised, and then holds it out for her. She takes his hand in hers, turns his palm over so she can see the lines on his skin. There are more than there used to be; they criss-cross the expanse of his skin like a road map, stretched over thin blue inlets of veins. Years and years and years, she imagines in them.

Lowering her fingertips to his skin, she traces along his palm. Here is where they met for the first time, here is where they won their first medal; and here is where he kissed her, and she kissed him back; and here, where the lines get so close together that she can hardly see where one ends and the other begins; here is where they should have stayed and never let go one of another again.

Scott’s breathing is slow and steady, his eyes trained on her, watchful. His skin is softer, she thinks – or maybe she just forgot what it felt like to have his hand in hers.

At the base of his thumb, her nail drags against his skin, and his whole hand trembles.

“You’re nervous,” she says, with a small smile. “Relax.”

“I don’t know if you’re aware,” Scott says, too evenly, like he has to concentrate on every single word, “but this isn’t exactly helping.”

She wants to kiss his palm. Would that be strange? Somehow, she doesn’t think it would help his nerves at all. It wasn’t like this at the Grand Prix Final, she swears – his hand had slipped into hers then, but it had been more on instinct than a conscious choice, clinging to one other amidst a hurricane. In the quiet of Scott’s living room, with nothing but the television playing softly in the background, things are different: more intentional, harder to explain away. He hasn’t looked this bewildered by her physical presence since he was nine years old and reeling off excuses as to why he couldn’t possibly hold hands and skate around the rink with a _girl_.

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” she says, as she turns his hand over. The veins are more pronounced here, pulled tight against his knuckles; she draws her fingertips along them, feels the tendons in his hand shift and splay.

She likes watching him react to her touch.

It’s not possessive, not exactly. It’s reminding herself that she’s still her, and he’s still him, and his body will still move for her the way it always has.

Scott isn’t looking at their hands anymore; he’s looking at her, his hazel eyes dark and focused, hyper-attentive. “You know, Tess,” he says, hoarsely. “Sometimes I can’t tell whether you’re about to kiss me or kill me.”

Tessa lifts her head to meet his gaze – and _fuck_ , his pupils are blown so wide, and his breath, when did that start coming so shallowly? There’s a starkness in his expression, one that shocks her into awareness of exactly what she’s doing, and why she should _not_ be doing it.

She drops his hand immediately.

“Sorry,” she stutters. “Sorry, I didn’t – I don’t know why I did that.”

An odd look passes across Scott’s face – hurt, surprise, confusion, all mixed up into something that causes the breath to catch in her throat – but he covers it up with an easy smile.

“Must be my animal magnetism,” he says, with a short laugh, but he takes his hand back into his lap, away from her.

She tries to push down the sense of roiling guilt in her stomach, the one that makes her feel nauseous and ill, but it refuses to leave her.  _You’ve hurt him again_ , it says, _again and again, like you always do, like you'll never stop doing_. It gets in her head, she knows it does, and it’s insidious and false and all the things she hates about herself, but she can’t help but follow that voice to the conclusion: whether being here might do more harm than good.  
  


* * *

  
She finishes choreographing the free dance by the end of the week.

It’s just as well that she’s done ahead of schedule. By Friday, Natalie has already been caught twice tiptoeing up the fire escape to try and watch through the windows of the studio (Gabriel was charged with distracting the receptionist monitoring the CCTV feed so that no one would notice Natalie scaling the building).

Tessa would be flattered by the corporate espionage she’s incited in her students, if it didn’t make her so nervous about the grand reveal. Even though she reminds herself time and time again that this program will be a work in progress up until the Olympics, that so many things will change once Natalie and Gabriel get the program onto the ice themselves, it doesn’t change the fact that this program – her choreography – is supposed to win them Olympic gold.

No pressure.

Naturally, Scott’s a sweetheart about it. He reassures her a thousand times over that last season’s free was fantastic, that if she needs more time all she has to do is say, that he can help with fitting the technical elements in, get her a session in the rink, a dance studio with functioning air conditioning, anything and everything she needs. He even secures them private ice for the morning of the reveal – although, by the way he tells it, he had to promise Patrice his first-born child before he relented and altered the rink schedule to make room for them. (Privately, Tessa thinks she would have gotten the job done with much less fuss. But Scott likes flaunting his martyr complex, so she lets him have it).

Private ice is a luxury Tessa does not take for granted. Over her decades of practice, she’s spent far too many sessions skidding around on divots left by hockey players and avoiding inexperienced rink-mates to not appreciate a few hours to herself. It does mean, however, that the rink is unnaturally quiet when she arrives that morning.

She’d wanted a last half-hour in the studio before getting on the ice, so Scott had gone across to the rink before her to run Natalie and Gabriel through their off-ice warm up. She sees them now as she walks around the boards, her skate guards squeaking on the matting underfoot; Scott, Natalie and Gabriel, waiting by the entrance to the ice. The younger pair sit on the bench next to the entrance, Natalie’s legs slung across Gabriel’s lap. They’re both chattering away to Scott, who leans back against the boards with his arms folded across his chest, his eyebrows raised at whatever they’re telling him.

As she approaches, Scott glances up and smiles. “Hey, she lives! Thought you might have finally combusted in that oven of a dance studio.”

“Morning, Tessa!” Natalie chirps, swinging her legs down from Gabriel’s lap when he shoves them so he can wave to Tessa.

Tessa manages to smile back at the three of them, despite feeling like her heart might jump straight through her mouth.

“Morning, team,” she says. “Ready to go? Gabriel, I’ve put you in charge of the music – I hope you don’t mind. I have no idea how this system works now.” She holds out a USB stick. “If this doesn’t work, I’ve got my phone as backup. Could you try and get something up and running for me?”

Gabriel nods, jumping up from his seat, and takes the USB stick she holds out.

“And Natalie, I need you to sit right here and make sure that I’m running to time. Let me know if any of the elements are too long, okay?”

“You got it,” Natalie grins, her ponytail bobbing as she nods her head. “Though I know it’ll all be perfect anyway.”

Next to her, Scott raises his hand above his head. There’s an expectant, hopeful look on his face, like a pupil trying to impress his teacher - if Scott could ever be accused of being a teacher’s pet. “What about me, coach?”

Tessa turns to face him, clasping her hands together in front of her.

“Scott,” she says, “what I need from you is just to sit still. No distractions. I know it might be hard, but please, for once in your life, I’m asking you to be quiet for five minutes.”

Scott gives her a thumbs up. “You got it. Quiet as a mouse, eh, Nat? No sound from these lips at all. Nada. Zilch.”

That’s a no, then. At least she’s had plenty of practice at tuning Scott out.

She takes the ice and warms up slowly, gets her knees underneath her as Gabriel prepares the music. The ice is clean and fresh, running smooth under her skates, but she feels the nerves jitter through her nonetheless. For the past year, she’s near-exclusively skated alone. Now, three pairs of eyes watch her with the expectation that she’s about to show them something truly astonishing.

From up in the audio desk, Gabriel gives her a thumbs up. Showtime.

She glides to a halt in the centre of the rink. “Before I start, I want to be clear on a few things. This program is still a work in progress. When you guys get the choreography onto the ice for the first time, it’s only natural that things will change. I don’t want you to think of what I’m about to show you as what you’re going to present at the Olympics, eight months from now. My aim here is to give you a feel for the program – the concept, the music, the positioning of the elements, and where those things change. The technicalities come later.”

“Everyone understand?” she prompts, after a moment of silence.

There’s a chorus of “Yes, Tessa,” “Yep!” – and a broad, relaxed “Peachy!” from Scott.

She tries to look stern, but he waggles his eyebrows in a way that makes her cough with barely-contained laughter and turn away to adopt her starting pose. She’s tuning him out, she tries to remember. No distractions.

On one knee, her arms folded across her chest, she steadies her breathing. She inhales – steels herself – exhales, feels the breath past her lips, steady and calm - and Clair de Lune begins.

Someone once told her that choreographing always felt so impersonal, like putting on another person’s shoes: stumbling and ungainly, the strangeness of moving to someone else's rhythm. Tessa can’t think of anything more intimate than the moments that pass as she dances, and the three of them watch. The movements pour from her, one after the other, each extension leading seamlessly into the next. She calls out elements as she goes, marking where her phantom partner spins around her, where he lifts her up into an arched position, where her students will bring the program to life in a way that she no longer can.

She dances for Natalie and Gabriel; she points her toes, extends her lines to her fingertips, pushes from her knees – tries to stay as technically exact as she can, carves feeling into the ice with every edge.

She dances for Scott; she feels the pull of his eyes on her, wants to show him that she’s here – she’s here, and she’s present, and she’s not a little girl, so eager to please, desperate for approval, but she wants him to see her all the same.

But most of all, she dances for herself. There's a simple joy in it: the feeling when she gathers speed and the music swells with her, her hair whipping around her, and there could be three people watching or three hundred. All she recognises is the lightness in her chest, the gasping of her breath, the steady whisper of her blades across the ice, trusting her years of training to carry her through the choreography. She knows here, now, without a shadow of a doubt - by the weightlessness when the cut of her blade moves perfectly in time with the music -  _this_ is what she missed. Him, and the freedom she finds here on the ice. Not one without the other. 

With the last, fading notes of music, she hits her ending pose. She leans into the curve of her line, fingertips stretching up and up, and the music slips into silence; stunned silence, she realises, when she looks across to the three people sat open-mouthed by the boards. There’s no applause. There’s nothing at all.  

In lieu of his students, Scott just about manages to collect himself. “Um. Wow, yeah. Okay,” he says, blinking, looking for all the world like he’s just been hit by a freight train. “That’ll work.”  
  


* * *

  
It all starts with a shirt. To be precise, it starts with the _lack_ of a shirt – hers.

As much as she and Scott joke about her buying out the entire fashion district of Montreal as soon as she set foot on home soil again, she’s barely had time to breathe, let alone indulge in a full afternoon’s worth of retail therapy. (And besides, when it’s between shopping or spending an evening handing Scott tissues as he tries not to cry at the ending of Titanic, there’s not really any competition).

Normally, the wardrobe contained in her suitcase would give her more than enough to last the week. Unfortunately, she quickly comes to realise that after a few years adjusting to the cooler climes of Paris, her work-out gear is woefully inappropriate for her new home. Her long-sleeved HeatTech shirts are perfect for keeping out the evening chill in frosty Paris; not so much for the stifling summer evenings in suburban Montreal. She makes do as well as she can, pulling out pyjama tank tops and faded old graphic tees every time she decides to head out for a run - but on Saturday evening, she finally comes up empty-handed. 

Unless there's something in her suitcases that she missed the first three times she emptied them onto her bedroom floor, there's absolutely nothing left. 

Traipsing downstairs, she peers into the living room – no Scott. No Scott in the kitchen, either, though she spots a yellow Post-it note stuck to the counter nearest the door: _Gone shopping for groceries_ , it reads.  _Didn’t want to wake you. Back in an hour. If you start the movie without me I WILL know and I WILL seek justice._

The last few words are underlined in bright red pen. Tessa rolls her eyes. It’s his pick for tonight’s movie – some derivative rom-com that Scott seems far too excited about and Tessa has never heard of. There’s absolutely zero danger of her making a headstart without him. The more pressing matter is her wardrobe dilemma.

She considers her options for a moment.

Would Scott mind too much if she stole one of his shirts? She would text, but he never answers his phone anyway. And she _knows_ he has an abundance of shirts available for the taking, because it used to enrage her when he filled all the closet space in their hotel room with his threadbare Team Canada t-shirts that she would never let him wear anyway.

He used to like it when she wore his stuff, too. He’d get this funny look on his face, all possessive and proud and a little bit turned on, wrapped up into one. She’d tease him about being a caveman and would continue to wear his oversized hockey jumpers and his leather jacket - purely because they were comfier than her own, of course. Nothing to do with the time she answered the door to him wearing only his faded Leafs jersey and an immaterial pair of grey pyjama shorts, and she _swore_ he got half-hard there and then.

Yes, she decides. Borrowing Scott’s clothing it is.

The house is as quiet as a mausoleum as she makes her way back upstairs and along the hallway with the open doors. Amber light from the setting sun peeks in through the window at the end of the corridor, slants of light shuttering through the blinds and casting angular shapes onto the floorboards.

There’s only one door on this hallway that she hasn’t been through. She hesitates at it now, her hand hovering over the door handle as she listens.  

Silence.

Obviously.

Ignoring the urge to knock, she pushes down on the door handle, and lets the door swing open with a slow creak.

The room that opens before her is surprisingly modest. Though it’s obviously the largest bedroom in the house, the space is sparsely furnished, with bare windowsills and wide, open stretches of flooring that groan underfoot as she steps inside. Turning on the spot, she takes it all in. There’s a bed at the side; a solid, rectangular frame in dark wood, with an assortment of navy and grey-blue blankets. All the pillows have been shoved to one side, and the sheets on the other are drawn back, crumpled and mussed. Evidently Scott is still not any better at making the bed in the mornings.  

Opposite the bed, double doors open onto a balcony overlooking the back garden, and there’s a small door at the side of the room, through which Tessa can see a shower cubicle and tiled flooring.

She trails her hand across the top of the empty bedside table. There are marks stained into the wood – a thin, dark line against the sun-bleached surface. Something was here once, for long enough that the wood around has turned pale from the sun - something removed hastily enough that there’s been nothing else to cover it up with.

In fact, Scott’s entire room is marked more by the absence of things than the presence of them: two leather chairs set in a corner by the balcony doors, a half-empty bookshelf, far too much closet space for him to ever use. There are things that should be here and are no longer, spaces that were once given over to somebody else. Scott has managed to hide its existence in the rest of the house, but here in his bedroom, Tessa is faced with the evidence of the other half that used to make up his whole.

It’s not a comfortable feeling.

Remembering briefly what she came here for, she opens his closet. Here too, half the rail is bare, Scott’s shirts and trousers crammed up against the left wall despite the abundance of space. Poking out from the very end is a ratty corner of red fabric – his Team Canada shirts.

She grabs the one that looks least likely to swamp her in fabric or fall apart in the middle of her run, and moves to close the closet door and head back to her room. But there’s something else that catches her eye – a break in the darkness at the very bottom of his closet, something that shimmers under the dim lamplight. Tessa squints at it, crouches down. It’s a small, square shape, fitted neatly against the back of the cupboard and draped in blue silk. The fabric slips against her fingers as she reaches out for it and pulls off the cover, her brow furrowing.  

Underneath is a box of purple velvet, barely bigger than her closed fist – and _oh_ , it hits her like a ton of bricks. Of course she knows what this is. What else could it be, buried in the bottom of Scott’s closet under a shroud, like a little funeral casket he can’t get rid of?

The shirt falls from her grip, and she sits down with a thud.

There’s a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach: something twisting, turning her insides upside-down, like the world has tipped suddenly on its axis and refuses to right itself again.

Carefully, she sets the box down on the floor in front of her.

She should definitely get up and leave. She should walk out of his room with his shirt clutched in her hands, and forget that she ever saw the box at the bottom of his closet. There’s absolutely no logic in sitting here and torturing herself with memories of a past that isn’t even hers, that could never be hers. It serves no purpose.

But she prises open the lid anyway.

In her head, she’d always wondered what Scott’s wedding would be like – even long after she’d stopped imagining herself in the wedding dress. He’d want a family affair, something small and simple; Alma to walk him up the aisle, his beer-league hockey teammates to pelt him with rice afterwards. In the end, Tessa suspects that it wouldn’t really matter what Scott wanted. He’d be a pushover for whatever his wife decided. (Which is when Tessa stopped imagining small and simple, and started imagining something out of The Bachelor).

Evidently, Amy had a more refined taste than anything Tessa ever credited Scott’s future spouse with.

There’s no claw setting with a massive, glittering gemstone, no diamond as big as Tessa’s thumb or white-gold band with encrusted jewels. The ring is simple and elegant. A finely twisted silver band is pushed into the purple velvet cushion, atop which a small diamond sits like the bloom of a rosebud, tiny filigree petals of silver fanning out around the stone.

It’s gorgeous. Tessa’s almost disgusted with herself for being surprised. Of course it’s perfect – from what she’s gathered over the last few years, Scott’s ex-fiancée would never have anything but flawless taste. Amy would be the kind of bride to ask for donations to a few chosen charities rather than wedding gifts; it would go with her whole save-the-world thing, along with her day job of teaching elementary school kids and making the world a better place every single day of her life.

They deserved to be married, Amy and Scott. They probably would have done if, by Scott’s own admission, Tessa hadn’t ruined him so completely for any future romantic relationship.  

What was it he’d said a year ago, back in London, sitting outside her house in the moonlight – that it was all because of her, because he couldn’t ever get her out of his head? Like a parasite, she thinks. Poisonous. Completely and utterly toxic for one another. What are they doing here, trying to force themselves back together again - and for what? So they can hurt each other even more thoroughly? So they can properly finish off the job they started?

“Tessa?”

Her blood turns to ice.

Scott stands in the doorway, both arms propped against the doorframe. He’s still got his sunglasses clutched in one hand, the ones he uses for driving, and his sneakers are on. The look on his face is so open, so trusting, his eyebrows raised in confusion but a smile ready on his face at the simple sight of her – it tears at her, she’s screwed it all up again.

“What are you…” he starts, and trails off.

She watches his gaze drift over to the small box on the rug; sees his eyes widen, then narrow, settling into something cold and hard. Swallowing hard, she reaches out to close the lid.

“Don’t touch it.”

Tessa’s hands drop limply by her sides. The ring sits there, nestled against the velvet, still glittering in the lamplight.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, the sound coming out all strange and choked. “I’m sorry.”

She wishes she could look away from him, but it feels as though her gaze is riveted into place, just as his is fixed on the ring box sitting on the floor next to her. The words catch in her mouth as she tries to say them, everything she wants to tell him melting away on her tongue, until all she can say is: “I didn't mean to - I - I only came in to borrow a shirt.”

He doesn’t reply. The silence stretches between them, frightening - she wishes could fill it but she barely knows where to begin, doesn’t know if this is a hole she can dig herself out of, or if she should just bury herself in the ground and be done with it.

She scrambles to her feet. “I shouldn’t have come in here. I’m sorry. It was invasive and rude, and I apologise. I’ll be in my own place by tomorrow.”

Scott rubs a hand across his face. “Yeah,” he sighs, muffled. “I think that would be better. Boundaries would be good right now.”

He’s not angry; that’s what Tessa can’t wrap her head around. Before, he’d be angry – furious, even, he’d raise his voice, tell her she was being a child. This bone-tired _indifference_ is what slips under her skin, like he’s given up even wasting anger on her. She wants him to be angry.

If she could just see his eyes, she thinks, she would know.

But he doesn’t look up as she walks past him and into the hallway. His back remains to her, his head dipped; she can see his hands clench and unclench by his sides, fingers digging into his palms, before he buries them deep into his pockets.  

With a quiet ‘click’, he closes the door on her.  
  


* * *

  
They spend the whole of Sunday avoiding each other.

It’s easy enough to do; Tessa has her packing, gathering all her things up from where they’ve somehow expanded to fill the entirety of the attic room, and Scott busies himself with hacking away at the shrubbery in the garden. She’s not entirely sure how long he stays outdoors, but he’s there when she tiptoes downstairs for breakfast, and he’s still there when she hauls her suitcases down to the front door at five p.m. Knowing Scott’s early-rising tendencies, she can’t rule out the possibility that he’s been there since the crack of dawn.

Half of her feels like she should call him out on this latest development, that they should be grown-up enough to confront their problems head-on. The other half wants to curl up in a corner and never bring up Saturday evening or ring boxes in closets ever again. But as the evening draws on, closer and closer to the time her taxi will arrive to take her to her apartment, and she gets ever more sick of watching Friends reruns on the couch by herself, she decides to take matters into her own hands. If Scott’s not going to step up to the plate, she’ll just have to do it herself.

Despite the lateness of the day, the heat as she steps out onto the back porch is almost unbearable. The sun still hangs low in the sky, blazing warmth, and the air around her is full and heavy, clinging to her skin. Even the birds have abandoned their singing. The sounds that she’s grown accustomed to over the course of the week are silenced. There’s only the occasional roar of a car engine as it speeds past the house, and the steady _swish-thunk_ of garden shears through vegetation.

She stands there for a moment, watching him.

He’s decided to go shirtless in the heat, because of _course_ he has. Of course he wouldn’t make this conversation any easier than it absolutely had to be. She watches the muscles of his arms shift and flex as he hoists the shears up to the top of the hedge – and then, with a quick double take, he notices her. He lowers the shears to the grass, turns to her with an unreadable expression on his face.

Before she can overthink what she’s going to say to him and decide that every single option is a horrible idea, she gives a brief wave of her hand. “Hey. You busy?”

Scott shrugs. “Not any more, I guess,” he calls, as he wipes his hands down on his cargo shorts and trudges up the garden to join her on the porch. He leans back against the porch railings, slipping his hands into his pockets – and really, Tessa thinks, it’s obscene that he’s somehow managed to maintain better abs _after_ retiring from a professional athletic career.

He glances up at her, briefly, then away across the garden. “Everything okay?”

She nods. “Yeah, yeah, it’s all good. I just – um, I wanted to catch you before I leave. My taxi’s booked for seven, so there’s not long. I don’t have much to say, really, apart from apologising. Again.”

The thin material of her dress flutters around her hips; she twists her hands into it, wishes she had pockets like Scott to hide the tells that she knows he can read.

“I really didn’t mean to find… what I did. I took advantage of your kindness, and I’m sorry.”

Scott shrugs. “Don’t sweat it, Tess. It’s not a big deal.”

“But it _is_ ,” she insists. “I mean, I – I betrayed your trust, I went poking around your room knowing that it was safe because you weren’t there. It was completely out of order.” Her brow furrows. “I don’t understand why you’re not angry with me.”

“I already told you that it’s not a big deal,” he says, but his jaw sets into a hard line. “You opened a door, you found a box. What’s the point in making it into anything else?”

There it is again: a refusal to engage. She squares her shoulders, angles her body towards him, occupying his space.

“Because it _deserves_ to be something. It needs to be something we talk about, Scott. I’m not going to sweep things under the rug any more, like if we ignore them for long enough they’ll go away and we won’t ever have to face up to the things that bother us. Ignoring the problem only makes things worse. Haven’t we learned that much?”

Scott doesn’t reply, but his eyes are trained on her now.

“We’re dealing with this,” she says. “Here and now, we’re sorting this out, and you’re going to listen because it’s important. Because it’s not just yesterday, is it? It’s the last three years you’ve spent trying to absolve me of any responsibility in what happened back then.”   

She wishes she could convince him to ignore whatever’s in his head that tells him he shares equally in all of it, her triumph and her blame; because they cannot be together in their entirety, because it’s unhealthy to go through life as this conglomerate, never allowing one another to be anything less than faultless – because she _knows_ that there’s a part of his brain that has been hardwired to account for her failures as his, to take on whatever she suffers through.

“ _I_ messed up, Scott. Me. It’s _my_ fault just as much as it is yours, and-“

He grabs her wrist, wraps his fingers around it hard enough that she looks back up at him with a start. “Tessa. Stop. I get it.”

His grip on her wrist tightens, and she shivers; realises, all of a sudden, that she’s standing close enough to him that she can see all the little flecks of gold and grey in his eyes, like tiny motes of stardust against the vast, endless hazel. He must realise it too, because he swallows, hard. But he doesn’t let go of her wrist.

“I’ll stop if you let me admit that I messed up,” she says, staring straight at him. “Don’t put me on some kind of pedestal. I’m not perfect.”

“I never said you were.”

“Of course not. You just won’t ever hear that I fucked up. Is that easier for you, if you can blame it on yourself? Does it make you feel better when you’re the only one to ruin things?”

He grinds the muscles at his jaw. “Yes.”

“Tough.”

Her eyes on him are unwavering, unforgiving. She refuses to let him look away, forces him to be with her, to be present, as much as he hates it.

“I’m apologising, and you’re going to hear it,” she says, and then, as he opens his mouth: “And _don’t_ tell me there’s nothing to apologise for, because we both know that’s bullshit.”

He closes his mouth again, settling with a low mutter of “Language”, but doesn’t pull away from her.

Her brain barely has the capacity to deal with anything beyond the countless memories she's tried to shove so far down that they never see the light of day again. Where does she begin? How far back does she go? Does she work backwards from Paris, from her leaving without so much as a fond farewell? Or do they go further than that, back to the dinner at the end of their last tour, where she’d told him that she wanted to retire, but she couldn’t look him in the eyes and tell him she was genuinely happy for him to stay in Montreal?

More than that, does she put a name to the fear that exists within her still? That yes, the fact that they’ve spent three years living a life separate from one another is terrifying in itself. And yes, she’s trying to understand who he is now, where the shape of his life might fit with hers, but sometimes she’ll catch herself on a strange angle of his smile, or the cadence of his voice as it shapes a word in a way she’s never heard before. Most of all, she’s scared that one day he’ll look at her and see a stranger.

There’s so much she wants to say – too much.

All the while, he stands there in front of her, no complaints, no rolled eyes.  He gives her the space to gather herself.

“Tess,” he says, quietly. She doesn’t want to look back at him; doesn’t want to see what she fears she’ll find in his eyes – the kind of love that will make it impossible for her to say anything at all. “Tessa, hey. I don’t know what’s going on inside that brain of yours, but I promise you, you’re telling yourself lies. You want to apologise? Fine. Be my guest. But I can tell you right now, nothing that happened since we retired has made me think any less of you. Nothing ever has.”

Tessa stares at him. “Scott, I left you for Paris with less than a week’s notice.”

“Yeah, and I ignored you for the next three years. Didn’t even come to see you off at the airport – my own partner. Not exactly the kind of behaviour we were taught, eh?”

His thumb rubs across the underside of her wrist; she wonders if he realises he’s doing it.

“I’m finished with the apologies,” he says, shaking his head. “What’s done is done, Tess. It’s okay. I can’t exactly stand here and say that I’m blameless, can I? We both messed up. There’s no point in holding grudges. We just move forwards.”

He’s so earnest, so unflinchingly honest, that she can genuinely believe that _he_ believes in what he’s saying. She thinks of the ugly clench of jealousy in her stomach, the bile that rises whenever she comes across phantom remnants of another’s life.

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It’s not,” Scott says, humourlessly. “Took a lot of soul-searching. But in the end, you just have to decide what matters to you. You find out pretty quickly that you’re willing to let go of a lot of the meaningless shit for the things you care about.”

Tessa’s throat tightens. “And then what? Once you’ve let go of everything else and decided what matters. Does it make a difference?”

He raises his gaze to meet hers. “Sure. From where I’m standing, makes all the difference in the world.”

The look in his eyes is far too intense, too much meaning in it. It makes her skin prickle in a way that has nothing to do with the heat of the midsummer evening, the sweat clinging to her skin. She barely knows what she wants or how to say it; only that she needs him closer and as far away as possible all at once, wants rid of this unbearable tension that clouds the air between them.

Boundaries, she reminds herself. Hopeless, useless boundaries. What do boundaries care about the way he touches her, so gentle and careful – his thumb rubbing across the underside of her wrist, or his hands skimming across her back?

The invisible boundaries she sets in her head know nothing about how, when he smiles at her, she feels like she could take on the whole world and come out unscathed.

And, by the way he looks at her, she gets the feeling that the boundaries in his head aren’t worth much either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter... got away from me a bit. Thank you to runnyc33 for doing a fabulous job in making this update readable!
> 
> (And just saying, I would pay good money to watch a Gadbois team-building championship. Three-legged race? Trust falls? Timed obstacle course? Who can build the tallest tower out of spaghetti and marshmallows? Someone tell Marie-France that the possibilities are endless.)


	12. Chapter 12

****Tessa's first few months of life as a skating coach pass in the blink of an eye.

It's funny how quickly the time seems to skip by when she's coaching. There's no way of accounting for it. Standing behind the boards and stealing swigs of coffee from Scott's thermos when he's not looking, she'll glance up to the clock to find they're somehow three hours into the day already, and they've barely even made a  _start_ on what she has planned for the session. Back when she and Scott were competing, even in the best days of training there would be moments that dragged: the third full run-through of the morning, or Marina lecturing them for the twentieth time about how they were falling behind Meryl and Charlie, how they were getting slow and sloppy and lazy - moments she would nod politely and grit her teeth through. 

Here, every second is precious. 

Natalie and Gabriel occupy ninety-nine percent of her time. They spend day after day working on the free dance together, altering the choreography like the fit of a new costume; they tighten the placement of a hand here, narrow the angle of the free leg there. When Tessa’s not tinkering with the free dance, she's running edgework drills, or attending costume fittings (Scott was only too happy to hand costume oversight to her), or sequestered in the studio, building the modern program to keep in reserve. There's barely time to make sure she's eating three meals a day and getting her eight hours of sleep a night. Her apartment in Montreal is barely touched, her things not yet unpacked since moving out of Scott’s place. She sees more of the office at Gadbois than she does of her own home.

And it's not just because Scott's also taken to storing his cereal in the communal kitchen cupboards, coming in at the crack of dawn to eat breakfast with her, sprawled out across the sofa in the office.

But it's maybe a little part of it. 

Their breakfast chats are nice - safe. They talk about the most meaningless things, inconsequential things, like the merits of being back in a city with a Tim Hortons on every corner, or the new exhibit at the V&A Museum that Scott pretends to care about as much as Tessa does. Sometimes Scott unhooks a photo off the wall, and they spend the whole hour talking about the time he used to wear 90s headbands to practice, and how long Tessa would put up with it now if he brought them back ("You'd have to find a new partner", she tells him, very promptly. He only grins at her, insufferable, because she's finally committed to calling him her partner again). 

She comes to look forward to that hour more than any other time of the day: an hour where they don't have to worry about being anything, or making sense of whatever they're trying to do here. They just talk. Marie-France raises her eyebrows every single time she arrives to find the two of them there already, but Tessa's firmly ignoring that too.

It's still odd to be on the ice with him. Their coaching partnership has progressed to the point where they can share the ice together, which makes things substantially easier. The effort now is reminding herself that she's  _not_ supposed to let her hand slip into his when they're standing against the boards, watching Natalie and Gabriel run through their pattern; or that when he skates behind her to demonstrate a turn, she's not supposed to follow along, should not allow their steps fall in time. The muscle memory refuses to leave her. Her first reflex, above anything, is to mirror him. She catches herself doing it even when they're skating separately, her partnering Gabriel and him partnering Natalie. If she lets her focus drift, even for a minute, she'll find herself off-axis, her free leg matching the wrong partner, the tilt of her edge too deep for the curve Gabriel is supposed to be leading her on.

Life would be easier if she and Scott would just skate together and let their students sit back and watch - but, wherever they are, they're not there yet. 

For now, they'll make this work.   
  


* * *

  
Tessa has never liked doing press.

She learned to put on the "media face" - that generic, reveal-nothing smile that would fill time while she mentally counted backwards from ten, reminding herself  _why_ it really was important that she sat there like a little push-button toy, repeating the same answers to the same questions: about her love life, about her dreams for the future, about how it felt to win the Olympics. 

Scott likes it even less. 

So, in hindsight, they probably should have turned down the reporter from CBC who approaches them to propose an interview about their coaching progress this season. But they're in the area for High Performance Camp, and they'd only have to wait for Natalie and Gabriel to be done with their own interview anyway, so it seems as good a way as any to kill an hour or so.

In the grand scheme of things, she and Scott have been through far worse than an uncomfortable interview. They've competed on an international level while not on speaking terms. They've been through twenty-eight hours of flight delays, and not murdered each other by the end of it. Hell, it looks like they might have even come through the last five years relatively unscathed. Tessa is positive they'll be able to deal with a single interview, however bad it might be.

Unfortunately, as she stands next to Scott, a mic shoved into her face and a reporter with teeth brighter than the surface of the sun grinning at her, she begins to reconsider that decision. Not least because Scott is being terribly fucking  _weird_ about the whole thing. When they shuffled into place for the interview, her arm brushed against his; by the way he reacted, she may as well have given him an electric shock. He's refused to make physical contact with her since, standing as far away as he can get without coming off like they've just had a falling out offstage. His hands are currently buried so deep in his jean pockets that Tessa's not sure they'll ever see the light of day again. 

It worries her for precisely one reason; he's only ever twitchy in front of cameras when he feels like he has something to hide.

"Okay then," the reporter announces, clearing her throat. "Just a few more questions here and we'll be all good. Thanks so much for your time."

Tessa drags her attention away from dissecting Scott's mental state, and tries to focus on the matter at hand. "Go ahead,” she nods, smiling at the reporter. “It's no trouble at all."

"Wonderful. So, I've heard summer training is going well for the team this year. Are Natalie and Gabriel where you'd like them to be at this point in the season? I'm sure in an Olympic year there's even more pressure to come out of the gates strong. Their first competition can't be far away now."

Three weeks, six days until Autumn Classic. Not that Tessa's counting. 

"They're making excellent progress," she says. "We have what we believe are two very strong, very individual programs. Of course, it takes time for everything to come together, but we see improvements in them every single day. They have such a high level of technical proficiency already; it would be easy to sit back and coast. But I truly believe we've only just scratched the surface of what they're capable of."

"Well, it sounds like we have a lot to look forward to this season! Being back here in Montreal, coaching at the same rink you two used to train at, must take you back to your own competitive days. Was it strange to come back to that?"

Beside Tessa, Scott makes a noise of disagreement. “Not really. We try to keep it focused on the kids. I mean, it’s all about them this time around. We’re honoured that people are still interested in what we’re up to, but this was really part of-“. He cuts himself off and glances quickly across to her. “-Well, I can’t speak for Tessa, but for myself - part of giving back to the sport. It's their journey. We're just the lucky ones who get to come along for the ride."

It’s fascinating how they slip back into old habits once the cameras are on and the microphone is out. She and Scott haven’t been ‘we’ for a very long time. But here they are again, the plural pronoun sneaking into conversation: one half of a whole once more.

The reporter smiles, wide. Her blonde hair is cropped into a short bob; when she nods, her whole head shakes like a little dashboard bobble-head. 

“Now, obviously the two of you have a longstanding professional relationship, and I’m sure you’re very familiar with one another’s collaborative process,” the reporter continues, and all of a sudden, Scott goes very still. Tessa tenses on instinct; this is never a good avenue of questioning. “There’s been some suggestion that changing coaching staff right before an Olympic year might not be the best move – that it’s an unusual move, even. What would you say to that?”

Tessa fights to keep the smile on her face. 

What she would  _like_ to say is that she doesn’t give a fuck what people have been suggesting about her and Scott, or whatever this reporter would like to insinuate about how she got to her position. Instead, she cycles through her pointers from two decades of media training. Gentle, measured tone. Slow nod of the head. Ignore the urge to slide a hand to Scott's shoulder, to check in, because he might jump a mile.

"I can appreciate that it's an unexpected decision to make, especially at this point in time," she says. "But that was really what Scott and the team came to me asking to do last season. They wanted to push boundaries, to make unusual choices. We think we were able to achieve that with the free dance last year. When I was approached with the suggestion of a full-time position, it seemed like the natural progression of our work from the previous season. I was thrilled to be involved."

Next to her, Scott shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “If I can just add,” he interjects, sounding not at all like their media training would have advised. The line of his brows is too sharp, furrowed; his voice raised too loud, the frustration written plain across his face. “Tess is here on her own merit. I don’t think people realise how talented a choreographer she is. She comes up with all of this stuff by herself. I don’t know whether that confuses people, whether they assume that I help her out, or Marie-France does it for her, but whatever it is, it’s rubbish. It’s all Tessa. She’s brilliant.”

Tessa tries to keep her expression as neutral as possible, but she’s sure the cameras catch the way her eyes widen fractionally, her eyebrows inching upwards.

The reporter looks taken aback. "Oh, of course, I-" she stutters. "Apologies, I didn't mean to imply-"

"Don't worry about it," Tessa says, covering for the two of them because Scott seems perfectly content to stand there and let the reporter flounder. "We appreciate your time."

Scott certainly doesn’t look like he shares her sentiment. He keeps staring straight ahead, his eyes fixed on some distant point above the cameras. Even as the press assistant motions them to the door, and Tessa exchanges her usual thanks with the camera crew before heading into the hallway, he remains silent. He trudges along behind her, his hands still in his pockets, lost in his own thoughts.

They meander along the hallway, towards where Natalie and Gabriel should be finishing up their interview. Scott’s footsteps are soft and measured on the carpet behind her, keeping pace but not catching up.

"Well," she says, throwing her voice back over her shoulder. "That was enlightening."

There's no reply. 

After a minute, they stop outside a room with a sign posted on the front of the door, reading “Press Room A”. Muffled voices float from within, just loud enough to make out their familiar tones.

Hand outstretched over the door handle, Tessa pauses. “Hey,” she says, lowering her voice so they won’t be heard from inside. "Are you okay? It seemed like I lost you a little bit back there."

Briefly, Scott’s eyes flicker up to meet hers - but he’s only brave enough to hold it for a second, before his gaze slips down to the floor. A frown twists itself into place on his face; the little line between his eyebrows folds like the spine of a well-worn book.

“I was sick of the way she was talking,” he mutters, his eyes fixed on the carpet. “Like you only got the job because I wanted to get in your pants.”

“I don’t think that’s  _exactly_ what she said.”

“She didn’t have to say it.”

Tessa drops her hand from the door handle, turning to face him. “People will always talk. It doesn’t make a difference what we tell them.”

“I know that,” he says, sounding frustrated. “I don’t care about that. They can say whatever the hell they want about me. But I’m not gonna stand there and let them reduce everything _you’ve_ done for this team down to the fact that we used to skate together. I _know_ you can take care of yourself, you don’t need me saying all this shit. But I want to do something about it, okay? I don’t want to be the asshole who says nothing.”

He looks up at her again, and perhaps this time he reads the genuine worry in her eyes, because his frown softens. His hand finds hers, squeezing before letting go, letting her know he’s not angry with her.

"C'mon,” he says. “Let's go rescue our kids."

And before she can say anything, he opens the door and gestures for her to go inside.

Tessa’s own interview aside, she’s had half-formed nightmares about this day ever since learning that Natalie and Gabriel’s formal interview training consisted of a few days being “mock-interviewed” by Scott in the office at Gadbois (which, he consequently admitted, ended with them abandoning the “interview” after half an hour to go and run their programs again). Most of her nightmares end in the building burning down, or Natalie revealing to the entire world that for the first week of training, her coaches shared an apartment. Something equally world-ending.

She’d tried to prepare the two of them for their interview as best she could. She sat down with them earlier that morning, reminded them to stick to the conversation pointers they’d come up with in response to the advance list of questions: safe topics like Natalie’s favourite place to go for lunch, or Gabriel’s most annoying habit, or how they manage to get through training sessions filled with Scott’s attempts at humour.

However, with Natalie, Tessa suspects there can never be any “safe” topics.

So, when Scott pushes open the door, she’s already bracing herself for the worst - particularly when it’s Natalie’s voice that greets her.

“…and so that’s how most days go. It’s pretty much the same thing for the next eight months, at least until we mess up so badly that we have to drastically change something,” Natalie says, her bubbly voice carrying well across the room. “But we’re very pleased with how things are going so far, I think. Would you agree, Gabe?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel nods, and Tessa can see even from this distance that he’s surprisingly at ease. She thinks about elbowing Scott and telling him to take pointers from his students, but that seems cruel. Especially when he’s just defended her honour on national television.

“There are some things we need to tighten up before competition starts, but we’ve had a lot of fun this summer,” Gabriel continues. “Bringing Tessa on board has really helped us push our artistic vision. I don’t think we’d be enjoying ourselves nearly as much without her here – and I can’t think of a better team to have supporting us through our first Olympics.”

The door squeaks loudly on its hinges as it closes behind them. Natalie’s head snaps up, her eyes brightening as she catches sight of the new arrivals. Scott waves a hand in greeting, pressing his other finger to his lips.

“Well, it sounds like you’ve made an excellent start to training. I wish you the best of luck in your practice and your competition this season,” says the reporter, hidden behind a massive, expensive-looking camera. “Thank you very much for your time.”

Natalie and Gabriel bob their heads in unison, both smiling.

“-thank you.”  
“-thanks very much, it was lovely speaking to you.”

Quickly, they filter off around the side of the room to join Tessa and Scott by the door. Natalie bounces on her heels as she rushes up to them.

“So,” she says, “how did yours go? What did they ask you? Was it a lot of-“

“Hold up, hold up,” Scott interrupts, raising a hand. “First, ice cream. Second, interrogation.”  
  


* * *

  
Twenty minutes (and a brief argument about the validity of TripAdvisor’s scoring system) later, the four of them sit in the front window of the small ice cream parlour which purports itself to be 'Vancouver’s #1 Scoop Shop’. The place is suspiciously deserted for a sunny afternoon in August – not that any of their claims can dissuade Scott, who repeatedly insists that they’re supporting local business.

“If I die from this bubblegum ice cream, make sure that my gravestone says ‘I told you so’,” Natalie says, as she peers at her ice cream, which is a worrying shade of fluorescent blue.

Tessa digs into her cup of chocolate ice cream. “Don’t forget ‘Tessa did not condone this activity either’. It’s important you get that on there too.”

Natalie grins and shoots Tessa a lazy finger gun. “You got it, boss. So how _did_ your interview go, anyway? Now that we have ice cream and Scott can stop making up excuses to avoid telling me.”

“The more important question,” Scott says, raising his eyebrows, “is how much did Tessa bribe you both to say all those nice things about her? Highly unethical, I’ve gotta say. What’s the going rate for next time?”

Tessa shoots a sidelong glare at Scott, who avoids eye contact.

“ _She_ didn’t have to pay us anything,” Gabriel says. “You could pay us if you want. We’ll slip you a few compliments too.”

Scott looks suitably outraged. “Why does she get it for free? Where’s your loyalty?”

“I thought I was ‘brilliant’ – isn’t that what you said?” Tessa says quietly, poking her spoon into her ice cream. It’s meant as an off-hand comment, parroting his words from the interview back at him. Unfortunately, Tessa forgets the company she keeps.

“Ooh,” Natalie coos, scraping her chair closer to the table. “What else did he say? Are you back to flirting on camera now?  You can’t take it back if there’s physical evidence, you know.”

A long, lingering silence follows her words. From somewhere in the back of the parlour, there’s a clattering of cutlery. Tessa wishes the source of the noise was a little closer to their table; or that they’d ignored Scott altogether and picked a more lively establishment, with a healthy dose of background chatter to make up for the failures of their table.  

Gabriel gives Natalie an admonishing elbow in the ribs. “Nat,” he mutters, a faint rosy glow on his pale cheeks. “Leave off.”

Scott twists his ice cream cone in his hand. He looks as intensely uncomfortable as Tessa feels, his eyes cast down towards the table.

Natalie glances quickly between them all, her smile sliding away. “Our, um, our interview went okay, I think,” she says. “We covered all the points you set out for us, Tessa. They were really helpful.”

“It was no problem at all,” Tessa says, finding her words – and if her voice is a little higher than usual, her cheeks more flushed, then it’s only the heat of the midsummer sun as it streams through the café windows. “I’m glad you found them useful. How about you, Gabriel? How do you think it went? You seemed comfortable in front of the cameras.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Scott’s shoulders lower, his body gradually relaxing out of a defensive posture.

“Pretty good,” Gabriel nods. “I’ve never really worried much about the media part of it. Maybe it’s because Nat’s always there too. It doesn’t seem like such a big deal.” He grimaces. “If I had to do it alone, I think I’d be a mess.”

Scott’s tone of voice is dry as a bone when he finally speaks. “Just wait until people are asking you to give TED talks. Partner or not, you’ll forget how to speak English like a human being.”

“Hey, I watched your TED talk!” Natalie pipes up. “It was pretty awful, sorry.”

“Right,” Scott barks, his chair scraping across the tiles as he gets up. “That’s it. Coaching is done. I’m through with you and your sass.”

Chaos ensues as Natalie tries to pull Scott back into his chair, only succeeding in knocking the ice cream out of his hand. For a second, she looks genuinely mortified as Scott gazes down at the melting pool of gloop on the tiled floor; then, all three onlooking members of the party burst into laughter, while Scott pouts.

Back to normal functioning.

That evening, strolling back to the hotel with the sun setting behind them, Tessa watches Natalie and Gabriel.

They’ve been chattering the whole way back from the restaurant they’d chosen for dinner, Gabriel’s hands nestled into his jacket pockets, Natalie’s weaving around her face in intricate gestures as she tells Gabriel a story from her childhood; from what Tessa can gather, it involves a trip to the woods, a broken arm, and the formation of a lifelong grudge against raccoons. Gabriel mutters something in response, and Natalie laughs, her face wide and open with happiness as she turns to him. The orange glow of the sunset outlines her features, burnishes every strand of her dark hair with fire.

“Oh hey, one sec, could you get a picture of me like this?” she asks Gabriel, holding out her phone. “I want to send it to Shelley.”

Gabriel takes the phone from her with a grin. “Ooh, _Shelley_.”

“Shut up,” Natalie says, her face turning a curious shade of crimson. Tessa makes a mental note to investigate further. “Get my good angle.”

“You don’t have any good angles,” Gabriel mutters, but Natalie stretches her arms out wide and poses, winking at the camera, and Gabriel spends a good five minutes crouching down and peering at the screen to work out the best shot.

Tessa can’t help but envy them.

They haven’t complicated their relationship with twenty-seven years of repeatedly blurred lines. Things were simpler when she and Scott were twenty and twenty-two; she idolised him, and he thought she was a child. Then, at least, they had nice little boxes to fit each other into. She doesn’t know what she can call him now, as he swings along the sidewalk next to her, silent. Perhaps it’s easiest if they don’t try and define anything. The idea of becoming an amorphous, unidentifiable, messy ‘thing’ is more palatable than trying to pin down exactly what this new facet of their relationship looks like. Friends probably shouldn’t look at each other the way she and Scott do. ‘Business partners’ makes her skin crawl. ‘Subject of my frustratingly realistic fantasies’ is, while technically true, nothing that anybody else needs to know about.

It's much easier to call it ‘undefinable’ and leave it at that.  
  


* * *

  
Tessa is just about beginning to get a handle on life as a skating coach. She doesn’t get much more sleep than she did as a self-employed, overworked fashion designer, but the work is rewarding, the company is entertaining, and the hour she spends alone on the ice after everyone else has packed up is just as satisfying as it was five months ago.

Then Scott gets sick the night before they’re due to leave for their first competition.

She wakes up to twenty-three text messages of varying lucidity, and her phone ringing loudly on her bedside table.

“Tessa,” comes the croaky voice of the man who is supposed to be meeting her outside the arena in Montreal in two hours’ time. “I think I might be dying.”

“Scott? You sound like hell,” she tells him. “Are you okay?”

“No! I threw up six times last night, I am _not_ okay! Did you not read my texts? Does any of this sound like ‘okay’ to you?”

Ah, yes. Sick Scott is needy.

“Calm down,” she says, as she potters around her apartment, collecting her things together. “Do you need me to get you anything? I can come and pick you up. Can you walk? How bad is it?”

“No, no,” Scott groans – and he really does sound terrible, his voice keeps squeaking up two octaves and back down again, like the world’s most out of tune accordion – “You need to – ouch, _fuck_ , that hurts.”

Tessa’s brow creases in concern. “Scott? I can be there in twenty minutes, hang on.”

“No, no, no, no,” Scott chants. “You have to go with Natalie and Gabriel to competition. They can’t miss this; it’s important. You need to take them.”

“What? You sound like you’re two steps away from a shallow grave. I can’t leave you alone for the whole day. We still need you for that gold medal, remember.”

Scott starts to laugh, a horrible, wheezing sound, and then cuts himself off with a coughing fit. She hopes he’s not about to throw up on the phone with her. She’s seen him throw up before – Scott does not do things by halves.

“God, that wasn’t even funny,” he croaks, through shallow breaths. “I’ll be fine. It’s probably food poisoning, so I’ll throw up a bunch and sleep for three days straight. Get the kids to the arena. Get them through today. I’ll call you after they’re done competing, let you know I’m still alive.”

Tessa pauses halfway through putting on a clean pair of pants one-handed.  

“I’ve never been to a competition alone,” she says, hesitantly.

“You’ve got Natalie and Gabriel,” Scott replies, but it’s not what she meant, and he knows. There’s ‘alone’ in the singular sense and then ‘alone’ as she and Scott came to define it - one half without the other.

“I know,” Tessa says. “It’s just…”

She thinks about explaining it to him; how just the thought of going without him makes her heart rate pick up, coils cold fear in her stomach. But there’s a time and place, she decides – and it’s not while he’s hacking his guts up on the end of the line, and she’s in the middle of pulling the tightest pair of jeans known to womankind up her thighs.

“Never mind. It’ll be fine. I’ll take Natalie and Gabriel to competition, get them sorted, and I’ll talk to you later. Please remember to sleep on your side. It’d be really horrible to find you unconscious in a pool of your own sick.”

“Always such a charmer,” Scott croaks.

She’s trying to pay attention as she dashes around the apartment, but her mind is whirling through a dozen things that have suddenly found themselves on her to-do list before her precious hours of preparation are up – accreditation, enough space on her phone to take video, digging out her Team Canada jacket, hideous as it is. Maybe she can get away with a maple leaf scarf instead.

“Tessa. Tess. Tessa. Tess-aaaa.”

“Yes! Yes, I’m here, I’m listening, sorry,” she rushes, balancing her phone in the cradle of her shoulder as she slips her arms through her sweater. “What is it?”

“Breathe,” he tells her – and she hasn’t said a word in the minutes she’s been running around the apartment, but he knows anyway. “You’ll be fine.”

“Thank you,” she says, quietly. “Don’t die.”

He gives a brief, hacking cough of laughter, and then hangs up.

Right. She’s attended approximately one-hundred and seventy-two competitions as a competitor. How hard can it be to get through a single domestic competition as a coach?  
  


* * *

  
What Tessa learns over the course of the next eight hours is that it can be much, much harder.

Firstly, there’s the constant, niggling fear in the back of her head that, at this very second, Scott is keeled over in a puddle of his own vomit, the life slowly draining from his eyes. It’s not quite the mental image that fits with the Finnstep. Then Gabriel tears a seam on his jacket, and Tessa has to run the entire length of the arena to find a needle and thread – typical that in the frazzled haze of that morning, her tiny little pouch of sewing gear had been the one thing she'd overlooked.  _Then_ they discover during practice that somebody's sent the venue the old music cut, so the timing of the elements is all off. In the interim between practice and competition, Tessa manages to pull the newest version off her emails and onto a USB drive, and rushes it to the audio booth.

It's not quite the calm, relaxing pre-competition environment that she's accustomed to. She puts on a stoic front, determined not to let the chaos affect Natalie and Gabriel, but the nerves begin to get to her – which, when she thinks about it, is ridiculous.

She’s been here a million times before; in rinks exactly like this, competitions with _far_ more riding on them than a simple little pre-season test skate. Every single minute of the next few days will be familiar to her. Why should things be so different just because she’s alone? There’s no world in which she wouldn’t be considered an independent person. She ticked that box pretty solidly when she moved away from home at the age of thirteen – and then again, double tick, when she moved halfway across the globe to launch a solo career.

But in the rink, with the buzz of competition filling the air, she’s only ever had Scott.

To be here on her own - even with the knowledge that Marie-France and her squadron of teams are thirty paces down the hall - is odd, unnerving. The strangeness settles over her like a dust sheet, awkward against her skin. She wishes he was here. 

Sitting in the small cafeteria at the front of the arena, waiting for Natalie and Gabriel to change into their costumes, she types out message after message. 

_All safe and sound (so far)_. 

_How're you doing back there? Still conscious?_

_Patrice is on high alert, I can send him over if you need a nurse for the day. Just don't expect him to be too thrilled about it._

And then, when she’s had a second to think about it:

_It’s weird being here without you._

She deletes it all before she can press send.

Pressing her chin into her hand, she stares out at the view of the rink beyond the cafeteria windows. There's another practice group on the ice now, a junior dance group. Couples warm up one by one, taking centre ice in turn as their music comes across the loudspeakers. Some are too slow, their edges too shallow; some stretch for each other's hands, scrambling and desperate; some are too early with their changes of hold, jerking their partner one way or the other. But some of them get it just right: precise and in unison, interweaving with their partner like liquid in motion, like it comes as naturally as breathing. 

Only, Tessa knows how many hours it takes to get to that point. The work is painstaking and exhausting, drilling the basics over and over, until you see the turns behind your closed eyelids when you drift off to sleep. The greatest achievement is to make something impossibly difficult look like it takes no effort at all.

Case in point, her and Scott’s entire relationship.

Suddenly, her phone buzzes on the table in front of her.

_Emergency!_ , she reads, from the bright LCD display – and at first, her heart dropping out of her mouth, her brain leaps to Scott, all alone in his house – and then she reads the name of the sender: Natalie.

Before she can move, her phone vibrates again.

_Please come quick! The girls’ changing room!_

Tessa gathers her things and hurries along the hallways to where she left Natalie only twenty minutes earlier. She has Tonya Harding-esque visions of Natalie, crumpled on the floor with a shattered kneecap. Maybe she’ll be lucky, and it’s only an emergency period call. Competition with Natalie and Gabriel better not be this dramatic every single time; there's only so much her nerves can take.

The changing room is quiet when she enters. No pools of blood anywhere – so far, so good. The cloying smell of hairspray lingers in the air, and a couple of stray rhinestones twinkle on the faded, grey tiling: the true hallmarks of a figure skater’s changing room. If she looked hard enough, she’d probably find a sticky strip of costume tape attached to the underside of a bench.

But no Natalie.

“Natalie?” she calls. Her voice echoes off the concrete. “Are you in here?”

“Oh, Tessa!” drifts the response, from around the corner towards the shower block. “You came! Please help, I don’t know what I’m doing with any of this.”

Following the voice round, Tessa finds a surprisingly miserable-looking Natalie, slumped on a bench opposite a grubby full-length mirror. She doesn’t look injured, or sick, or otherwise out of sorts. Her costume, a lovely, deep purple dress cut in gentle waves at the waist, is intact as far as Tessa can tell – no emergency repairs to be made.

“What’s the matter? I came as quickly as I could once I got your texts. Is everything alright?” Tessa asks, taking a seat on the bench next to Natalie.

“No,” Natalie sighs. She rummages in the folds of her dress for a few moments, and then produces a small, thin tube in one hand. “I can’t get my eyeliner right. Normally I get Gabriel to do it for me, even though he’s awful at it, but he’s – well, he’s not answering his phone and I can’t exactly walk into the boys’ changing room to find him. And then I just thought, hey, Tessa always has perfect eyeliner, so maybe I should ask you instead, you could teach me how to do it properly or something…”

Tessa gives a sigh of relief. “Hence the emergency.”

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to cause any kind of panic. I know today is stressful enough as it is.”

The stranglehold of fear in Tessa’s chest loosens slightly. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “It’s honestly a nice relief to walk in here and only be asked to do your makeup. I was expecting something much more drastic.”

Natalie gives a weak smile, but it doesn’t meet her eyes; it’s a startling contrast to the girl Tessa has known for the past year and a bit, who seems to have a smile in permanent residence.

“Here,” Tessa says, as she takes the eyeliner and uncaps the pen. “Keep as still as you can, okay?”

With one hand, she tilts Natalie’s chin upwards, drawing the eyeliner along the curve of Natalie's eyelid with the other. Her hands are steady and gentle, a practiced ease about her movements.

“No one should have to rely on their partner for makeup,” she says, in a conversational tone of voice. “Did I ever tell you that I got Scott to do mine for a dare once? He mixed up eyeshadow and lipgloss. Not my best look." 

“Gabriel’s not that bad at doing my makeup,” Natalie says, quietly. “Usually it turns out okay, I mean.”

Up this close, Natalie's expressions are even easier to read. Her gaze flickers back and forth between Tessa's eyes and the top of her head, and she tugs at her bottom lip with her teeth. Natalie often reminds Tessa of a teenaged Scott; everything about her is close to the surface. There's nothing hidden, no malice or secrecy - which makes it even easier to tell that something is clearly bothering her beyond a lacklustre cat-eye. 

Tessa finishes applying the eyeliner and recaps the pen, placing it back on the bench between them. "Is everything alright? Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?"

A brief flicker of surprise flashes across Natalie’s face, before it’s replaced quickly with apprehension. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why, do you think there’s something we need to talk about?”

"Only if you do," Tessa says. "All I’ll say is that you certainly  _look_ like there's something you want to talk about. And I couldn't help but notice you trail off every time you mentioned Gabriel."

Natalie flushes, the pink of her cheeks mottled with the freckles dotted across her nose.

"If it's none of my business, you can say so. In the interests of my job, it's important to make sure nothing adversely affects your performance. But in the interests of our friendship, I care about your wellbeing, no matter how it affects competition. If you want to talk to me, I’m here. And I think we've got," she glances quickly at her watch, "oh, about five minutes before Gabriel comes looking for us."

The fabric of Natalie's dress rustles as she fiddles with the hem of her skirt. Tessa can see her struggling to find the words, stringing the sentences together in her brain.

"I don't know if anything is actually wrong..." Natalie starts, haltingly. "Maybe it's just me overreacting. At first I thought I was imagining it or I was being too sensitive, but it happened again outside the changing rooms just now, and I'm sure it must be  _something_ , I just..."

She quietens again. For a moment Tessa thinks that she's going to get up and walk away, end the conversation there and then. But, all of a sudden, she sighs and slumps against the wall, like all of the tension keeping her strung up leaves her at once.

“He won't look at me anymore,” Natalie says. “Gabriel, I mean. I don't know what I did wrong. We do our run-through and he talks to me and laughs like he always does, and he makes eye contact like we're supposed to, at all the points you taught us - and then as soon as we're "off duty" and not working any more, it's like I don't exist. I don’t understand it. Do you think I did something to upset him? You know he can be shy, but it's never been like this before."

Tessa frowns. "Exactly how long has this been going on?"

"Not long. Maybe a week, a week and a half max. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't imagining things before I said anything."

“And you can’t think of anything that might have changed in that week to cause him to act like this?”

“No, nothing at all.”

“Is it only that he won’t look at you? He’s not saying anything specific?”

Natalie sighs. “No, I wish he was! Maybe if he’d actually talk to me we’d be able to sort this out. But it feels weird confronting him about it… I mean, what if he’s not actually ignoring me and I’ve just made up this massive issue that doesn’t even exist?”

“Tell you what,” Tessa says. “I’ll try and keep an eye out during the next week, to see if I notice anything. Then at least we'll have more of an idea what's going on. It’ll only distract both of you from the competition if you try and talk to him now. Do you think you can get through a few more days?

Natalie nods. “That should be fine. Even talking to you like this helps. I think I can probably manage it without murdering him.”

“That’s always a good start,” Tessa laughs, as she gets to her feet. “I’ll make sure to watch out for you, don’t worry. Thank you for telling me. I really appreciate it, Nat.”

Natalie gives a small salute, dipping her head. “Thanks for the emergency eyeliner. And, oh - wait,” she says, as Tessa turns to leave the changing rooms. “I forgot to ask, would you please not tell Scott about this? It’s nothing major, it’s just that I know he would bring it up with Gabriel as soon as he possibly could, and I kind of think that it’s better to wait and see what happens. I’d rather not make a big issue out of something that might blow over by itself.”

Tessa hesitates in the doorway. “I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to withhold information…” she begins, and watches as Natalie’s expression turns pleading, wide-eyed. “Alright,” she sighs. “Relax. I won’t tell Scott.”

“You promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die, et cetera.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go  _that_ far, but-" Natalie says, the hint of a smile already twitching at the corners of her lips again.

Tessa rolls her eyes fondly, tapping her wrist with a finger. "Come on then, before you start off the season with a time penalty. Out of the changing rooms and ready in five minutes, Natalie. I’m waiting.”

“Yes, Tessa.”  
  


* * *

  
When Tessa pulls up outside Scott's house later that night, the lights are all off. There's no hint of movement from within, no glow of the television through the living room window. The windows at the front of the house lie empty and dark, reflecting back only the dim light of the evening sun; a fact that is immediately concerning to Tessa as she gets out of her car and hurries up the driveway.

All around her, the air is still and quiet. It reminds her of the first days of a disaster movie - the moment when the protagonist arrives late to the apocalypse that everyone else has already perished from. Well, she's already crushed one of Scott's beloved begonias in the process of parking as quickly as possible, so there'll be hell to pay whether or not the world collapses around them. Is it terrible of her to hope he's  _just_ delirious enough not to care?

Reaching the top step of the porch, she hammers on the front door.

For a long minute, there's only silence.

He better not be dead. It would really be just like Scott to do something inconvenient like die before they managed to straighten things out between them.

She tries the doorbell, knocks again. She's scrabbling around in her bag for her phone when she hears it - a low, mumbling stream of noise from behind the door. 

"Scott?" she says, as her fingers close around her phone. "Are you okay?"

The door jerks open with a rattling noise, the latch chain swinging violently. Scott stands in front of her. He's - well, he's not exactly a sight for sore eyes, but he's certainly a sight. His brown hair sticks up at odd angles, like he's been given an electric shock, and though he's wrapped a faded grey dressing gown around himself, a pair of ratty pyjama bottoms peek out from underneath the hem. He blinks slowly at her, squinting against the dwindling sunlight.

"Hey, Tess," he rasps, drawing out the syllables of her name. His voice sounds even worse than it did over the phone. "Fancy seeing you here. Everything okay?"

Tessa's brow furrows. "I was going to ask you. You told me to come over once we were done at competition."

"Oh," he says, pausing. "Did I?"

She pulls her phone out from her bag and shows him the messages: a lengthy series of misspelled requests for her to come and save him from his misery. Scrolling down the list, she reads some of them off.

“I appreciated it when you started getting philosophical. See this one here, this one says ‘Why do good people have bad things happen to them’. This one just says 'everything sucks'. Oh, and this one was fun. This was the one where you told me you'd just thrown up twice. I received that during the press conference."

Scott leans heavily back against the doorframe with a pained expression on his face. "God, sorry. I've been out of it the whole day. Can I-" and he holds his hand out for her phone, "-can I see those?"

"Nope," Tessa says, slipping the phone back into her pocket. "These are being stored for safekeeping. Possibly blackmail. We’ll see how it goes."

"What happened to sympathy for the invalid?"

Tessa folds her arms across her chest. "I'm here, aren't I? And relax, I'm not cooking you dinner. One bout of food poisoning is more than enough."

Scott's eyebrows raise in a hopeful manner. "Are you going to nurse my broken body back to health?"

"Invite me in and you might find out."

Stepping aside, Scott gestures for her to enter. 

Inside, his house is exactly the same as she remembers it: tidy, clean, blessedly free of pools of vomit. She deposits her bag in the hallway and goes through to the kitchen, immediately busying herself with rummaging through the cupboards. Scott slopes along behind her like a lost puppy, hovering in the doorway as she pulls out a mug and sets the kettle boiling.

"Go and sit down," she tells him, over her shoulder. "I'll bring it through when it's done."

"Chamomile?"

"Of course."

He's not usually one for tea - like her, coffee is his poison of choice - but his mom used to make him chamomile tea whenever he was sick, brewed in a special mug with love hearts on it. Unfortunately, Tessa can only do so much; the tea will have to suffice. 

"You're the best," he mumbles, yawning, and trudges out of the kitchen. 

By the time she's unearthed the chamomile teabags and made up a mug of tea for him, there's only silence from the living room. When she comes back into the room, mug in hand, it becomes apparent why. Scott sits slumped against the sofa, his limbs sprawled akimbo in every which direction, his head flopped back against the top of the cushion, mouth open as he snores quietly. A little trail of drool puddles on the cushion underneath his head. 

Carefully, she places the mug down on the coffee table. Dark circles ring his eyes, an unhealthy sheen of sweat turning his skin pallid; he looks half gone already. Perhaps it's best if she sticks around for a little while, whether or not he’s conscious.

She takes a seat on the opposite end of the sofa, trying not to disturb his outstretched limbs as she lowers herself slowly down. But Scott doesn't stir, not even when she shifts and the whole sofa groans underneath her weight like it's about to sink into the depths of the Earth. He sleeps like the dead, his chest barely rising - so much so that she begins to worry that maybe he dropped dead in his sleep.

"Scott?" she whispers.

There's a grumbling, shifting response from the pile of dressing gown and pyjamas. The words: "Not dead yet," drift out, and he rolls slowly over to face her.

"Okay, good. Just checking," she tells him, softly, and then presses the back of a hand to his forehead. "Jeez, you're on fire."

"Thank you very much," he mumbles - except it comes out as one word, all slurred, like he's speaking through a mouthful of cotton. "I have been told before." 

Scott's eyes flutter open briefly - and is  _she_ hallucinating as well, or is he actually winking at her? She pushes the thought out of her head; he's delirious. For all she knows, his body is going through the final spasms of death. 

She shakes her head. "You are well and truly out of it."

“No,  _you’re_ out of it,” Scott mumbles. He twists himself around on the sofa until he's lying flat on his back, his face turned up to the ceiling. 

“Natalie and Gabriel placed first in the rhythm dance,” she tells him. “They did really well, you would have been proud of them.”

“Fantastic,” Scott says, in a faint tone of voice, his eyelids creeping closed.

“I think Natalie has a girlfriend. She was waving in the stands when they got off the ice, and I saw them outside when I was leaving. She looks sweet.”

“Wonderful.”

“I’m pregnant and carrying your child.”

“Hmm. That’s nice.”

Definitely delirious, then. What's the point at which she should be genuinely worried that this fever is life-threatening? Don't brain cells begin to die at five degrees above resting body temperature?

"I don't think it's a good idea to leave you alone," she says, frowning. "Maybe I should ask Patrice to keep an eye on you tomorrow."

Scott grumbles, throwing out an arm across her lap. "You're way more fun than Patrice. Why can't you stay instead?"

"Because," she says, picking up his hand between her thumb and forefinger, and depositing his wayward limb back atop his own body. "I know it might have slipped your mind right now, but we have a team who needs at least one of us at the rink for competition, bright and early tomorrow morning. And I have a feeling that's not going to be you.

"That sounds like a hassle. Why would we do that when we could go and retire somewhere nice and sunny? I think that's what we deserve. No more freezing our asses off. Just sun and sand."

“Hmm,” Tessa says, tilting her head to one side, considering. “Where would you go?”

Scott wrinkles his nose up, like he's thinking very hard. "France," he says, after a while. "Definitely France."

"Why France?"

"Mm," Scott mumbles, his grip tightening into his dressing gown. "I dunno. Difficult question. Always the difficult questions with you."

She looks down at her hands, trying not to over-analyse his answers. "Sorry," she says - even though it won't make a jot of difference; he won't remember any of this. "I'll stop. I should go soon anyway, I have a few things to sort out before tomorrow, and I'm sure you want to get back to sleep. I'll just make sure Patrice can look after you-"

Scott's hand wraps weakly around her wrist. His fingers are clammy and cold against her skin.

"Wait," he says. "Don't go yet, just - just wait. For a little bit." He cracks an eye open, peers up at her with a placating smile. "You can ask all the questions you want."

She raises an eyebrow at him, but settles back against the sofa. "Alright. Just for a little bit. Long enough to make sure you're not going to die in your sleep."

"No chance," he yawns, his hand falling away from her wrist. “Got too much shit left to do in my life, T.”

His eyes close again; she watches him shift on the sofa, turning his head to press his cheek against the cool surface of the cushions, first one way, then the other. With his eyes closed and his hair flopped across his forehead, his face upturned towards her, he looks so young - so vulnerable. She forgets, often, that he's had his share of troubles too; he covers them so easily with laughter. 

But he was engaged, once - had a whole future stretching out in front of him, nice and neat and just the way he'd always dreamed - and then he wasn't.

So maybe they're both hurting as much as each other. 

When she lifts his head gently into her lap, and his eyes flutter open to meet hers, there’s forgiveness there. And when she runs her fingers slowly through his hair and watches him drift back off to sleep – just like she did the morning after they won gold at Pyeongchang, exhausted in a way that ran to the bone – there’s something that goes a little way to acceptance.  
  


* * *

  
In the end, "just for a little bit" is jolting awake at midnight to find that her legs have gone numb underneath her and Scott's head isn't so much resting in her lap as it is pressed up against her stomach, so tight that she wonders how he can even breathe.

It's shifting to ensure she doesn't inadvertently suffocate him in his sleep; only he grumbles and clings onto his Tessa-shaped source of warmth, so she has to settle for shuffling awkwardly down along the length of the sofa until they're lying side by side, and she can feel the rise and fall of his chest next to hers.

It's smoothing the hair back from his face when he's hunched over the toilet bowl at three in the morning, emptying the contents of his stomach, and settling back onto the sofa afterwards with an arm tucked protectively across his chest, soothing herself to the faint whistle of his breathing as he sleeps.

It's attempting to extract herself the following morning, but he rolls over and tries to pull her back down with him, won't hear any of her reasoning about how she has a competition to prepare for; he just pouts and curls himself up into a tight little ball until she relents and brings her bowl of cereal over to the sofa so he can lean his head against her thigh while she eats breakfast.

It's the full laundry list of instructions she leaves with Patrice ("chamomile tea every few hours, plain toast with no butter if he can stomach it, painkillers in the downstairs bathroom cupboard if you really need, and if he starts rambling about the old times, take everything with a pinch of salt") and the way Patrice doesn't even blink - just nods, solemn, and assures Tessa that he'll take care of things. 

It's Natalie's grin and "Good night, then?" when she finds Tessa hunched over her mug of coffee in the rinkside café, bleary-eyed and yawning.

And Tessa doesn't have anything left in her than to admit, in spite of everything: "Yeah. Pretty perfect, actually."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing sick, grumbling, needy Scott was way too much fun. I'm going to have trouble writing normal Scott ever again.
> 
> The next chapter might take a little longer than usual, given I've got a fair amount left to draft alongside a hefty set of upcoming exams, but after that it's alllll downhill. This rolling stone WILL gather speed. Thanks for coming along for the ride!


	13. Chapter 13

In the days that follow Natalie and Gabriel’s win at Autumn Classic, it’s business as usual at the rink. Scott recovers from his bout of food poisoning in time to save Tessa from single-parenting an entire week of coaching, Tessa applies plenty of heat to the pulled muscle in her back (courtesy of two nights sleeping on Scott’s living room sofa), and Patrice refuses to speak of the horrors he experienced during his time playing nurse.

But what also becomes clear over the ensuing weeks is that there are things Tessa keeps noticing - little things, small enough to skip over entirely if she wasn’t so attuned to Scott’s behaviour - that slowly begin to add up.

Like how she and Scott are always the first ones to arrive at the rink, and the very last ones to leave, because their communal breakfast in the office, with her occupying two chairs for herself and her feet, and Scott relegated to an armchair they cram up to the table, has expanded to encompass breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There’s always an excuse for it: reviewing a new ISU communication, studying video footage from the day’s training, discussing the plan for the next month. Their attempts at justifying dinner dates every day of the week are as varied as their immediate agreement to any such offer is not.  

It’s not as if they don’t have any other place to go. Either her apartment or Scott’s house would do perfectly well, but Tessa has a sneaking suspicion that neither of them are prepared to lend this new development in their relationship _that_ kind of legitimacy just yet. So they meet halfway, in limbo: the coaches’ office at Gadbois. (A place where they now spend so much time that Patrice jokes they’ll have to stick a house number on the front door).

But as she reminds herself, steadfast: it’s purely friendly.

Ignoring the way Scott looks at her when she waltzes into the office after coaching has finished for the day and she’s fresh from the showers, her skin still damp, wet hair tousled and spilling across her shoulders, change of clothes clinging in places that they never would normally – and it strikes her that, technically, they’re alone in a room with a closed door.

Ignoring the times she catches herself watching him at the boards: noticing the thick muscle of his arms, folded across his chest; his eyes, dark and focused; the sharp angles of his jaw, his chin tilting as he nods in time to the music.

Ignoring the little voice in the back of her head that can’t help but _wonder_.  
  


* * *

  
Whatever their coaching methods have somehow morphed into, Tessa is ninety-nine percent certain that it is _not_ what the technical handbook prescribes. Normal coaching techniques probably shouldn’t devolve into an excuse to touch each other as much as possible - like if it’s done under the guise of “teaching”, that makes it any more acceptable.

The whole thing starts perfectly innocently, like any typical day of training.

Patrice always assigns them the first slot in the rink on Monday mornings. It’s by far the quietest session of the week, most teams preferring to push for a later start after the weekend, which gives the remaining few pairs the luxury of being able to run their elements without having to weave between five other couples. This Monday, the four of them are working on the rhythm dance pattern, Tessa and Scott stood in their usual spots by the boards, Natalie and Gabriel out on the ice, drilling the key points of the pattern.

“Not bad, guys,” Scott calls, as the pair finish up a repetition and skate over to the boards. “The steps are really getting there, nice and light. Nat, just watch your posture, you’re looking down a lot when you skate. That’s gonna be something that comes with practice, once you get more comfortable with the steps, but by competition we want that head up, beautiful extension-”

And he turns to Tessa, clutching a cup of coffee next to him, and brushes a hand along the side of her neck to demonstrate the extension he’s looking for. Halfway through, he seems to realise what he’s doing, because she sees him swallow and fix his gaze on the lapel of her coat.

He drops his arm to his side.

“That’s, uh-” he says, staring blankly down at his hand, like he can’t believe what his limbs have just done of their own volition. “That’s what we’re looking for.”

Natalie nods, completely unfazed. “Okay!” she says, glancing over to Tessa before pushing off to set up the pattern again. “I’ll give it a go.”

What seems like an eternity passes as Scott leans forward and folds his arms over the top of the boards, and Natalie and Gabriel shuffle into position. Tessa drums her fingers against her hip, keeping time with the rhythm as the pair begin to move across the ice. Absent-mindedly, she notes that they’re a fraction too early with the third keypoint; they’ll have to look at that later.

Scott clears his throat. “Sorry, Tess, I didn’t even think... I should’ve asked-”

“Natalie, Gabriel?” she interrupts him to call across the rink, and his eyes widen in surprise. “That’s great, thank you. One more thing to add. Gabriel,” she says, as he skates up to join them, his face flushed with exertion, hand still clasped in Natalie’s. “That first key point, the step before the rocker, you’re keeping your chin tucked in very tight to your chest, and it can make you look a little hunched. If Scott will allow me to demonstrate…”

Turning to Scott, who looks at her with a befuddled expression, she taps two fingers underneath his chin. He catches on quickly; a grin splits across his face, and he raises his head until it’s tilted so high that his nose protrudes into the air like the bow of a ship.

“Mm, okay,” Tessa says, with a raised eyebrow, as Gabriel gives a quiet snicker of laughter. “Unless you have a nose as hefty as his, maybe don’t copy Scott’s example. It’ll look less elegant if the judges are able to see up your nostrils.”

Scott makes an offended noise. “‘Hefty’? You love my nose! It has character.”

Without comment, Tessa takes his chin in her hand again and pulls it back down, before giving him a brief pat on the cheek. “Keep telling yourself that.”

But it’s the look after that gets her: half-delighted at her reciprocation, half-intrigued at exactly how far they can push this, the look in his eyes that tells her, in no uncertain terms, that it’s _on_.

Once they’ve set the precedent, there’s no stopping them. However hard she tries to prevent this from turning into another one of their weird games (spoiler alert: she doesn’t try very hard), the ones that were an endless source of entertainment for their rink mates at both the Arctic Edge and Gadbois, her stubborn competitive streak won’t let her back down from a challenge.

She comes to recognise the shift in his demeanour, the glimmer of amusement mixed with a certain kind of intensity that she hasn’t been the recipient of in a fair few years. And then, soon enough, it’s his hand at the curve of her waist, or the jut of her hip, or the ridge of her collarbone, brushing her hair back behind her shoulders, lingering. All the while, he manages to turn excuses to put his hands on her into what can _just_ about pass as legitimate coaching points.

“See, we want this line here,” he says, waving Natalie and Gabriel over as they set up to run the first section of their free again. “It’s this, look-“ and he slips over to the side of Tessa, glides a hand across the back of her shoulder blades, over her fleece jacket. His touch is light, but she can feel it through the layers as he draws a finger up the back of her spine – her stomach tightening, anticipating the next time he touches her, and the next, even as Natalie skates around to watch Scott demonstrate, using the line of Tessa’s shoulders, exactly how she should be carrying herself.

She’s still not _entirely_ sure he’s not just doing it to fuck with her.

But slowly, she’s coming around to the fact that maybe his behaviour during their interview at High Performance Camp wasn’t strange or out of character at all. The fact that he refused to touch her might have had nothing to do with nerves, or some secret upset. Maybe it had much more to do with how he freezes, stock-still, when she slips up behind him and presses her palm flat against his abdomen, tells him to stand up straight so she can use him to teach good posture.  
  


* * *

  
A week later, she stumbles across the opportunity to put that theory to the test.

It’s another one of their late nights at the rink. The parking lot has long emptied, only Scott’s bright red SUV and her little city runaround left in the neat parking bays, as Tessa crosses the asphalt to the entrance of the building, her arms laden with takeout cartons. The stocky security guard at the door eyes her with amusement, his arms folded across his chest, but doesn't say anything while she wobbles her way past, just gives her a quick smile and a nod. 

Inside, the hallways lie quiet and still. Tessa passes rows of multi-coloured lockers, all closed up tight, changing rooms scrubbed clean, the sharp smell of citrus disinfectant wafting into the corridor. Beyond the large windows of the viewing gallery, the ice is freshly resurfaced, ready for the first practice session tomorrow.

There’s something about being in the rink after everyone else has gone home that still gives her a slight thrill - like she’s ten years old again, and sneaking into school after hours. Every room that she passes seems somehow different, as if the whole building is lying dormant, waiting for someone to come along and reawaken it. During the day, there's never any time to take in her surroundings. But late at night, when Tessa can hear the echo of every footstep, she likes to imagine there are things about this old building that only she has ever experienced; only her and Scott.

Drawing up to a closed door at the very end of the corridor, she knocks twice with the point of her elbow. Before she can knock a third time, the door swings open in front of her.

Scott stands in the doorway, clad in baggy tracksuit pants and a t-shirt emblazoned with the Tragically Hip tour dates, which, to Tessa's benefit, fits rather more snugly than his pants. 

“Yo,” he says, and then, his eyebrows shooting upwards as he looks down at the pile of takeout cartons in her arms: “Shit, Tess, what did you do? Buy out the whole restaurant?”

“I got hungry,” she shrugs, ducking under his arm and into the dance studio; Scott had proposed a change of scenery if they were going to stick it out at the rink for the fifth night in a row. “We can always eat the leftovers for lunch.”

Scott chuckles. “Yeah, sure looks like it. How long were you planning on having us eat Chinese takeout, the entire Olympic cycle?”

Glaring at him, she leans awkwardly down and deposits the cartons on a small side table that, in her absence, Scott has procured from somewhere in the building, along with two plastic chairs, a large wad of paper napkins, and two sets of plastic cutlery and plates that are presumably leftovers from a kids’ birthday party, judging by the pink and purple fairy princesses printed across them.

“You can get the food next time, then,” Tessa tells him. “See how well you cope with balancing fourteen boxes of takeout in your arms. My main concern was avoiding third-degree burns.”

Scott joins her at the table with a grin, his chair making a horrible scraping sound as he pushes it back. “Bring it on. My arms are famously secure. There’s nothing escaping this grip.”

Tessa merely raises her eyebrows, busying herself with sorting out the boxes between them. A mouth-watering smell floats upwards as she pulls the first one towards her and opens it up: beef in black bean sauce. She pushes it across the table to Scott.

“What?” he says, sounding a little affronted. “What’s that look supposed to mean?”

Tessa shakes her head. “Nothing.”

Scott narrows his eyes, pointing the prongs of his fork towards her.  “Lies. The eyebrows tell all.”

Keeping said eyebrows pointedly raised, Tessa scoops half a box of rice and chicken onto her plate. Scott places his cutlery down on the table and leans forward in his chair.

“Mhmm,” he says, squinting at her so hard that he almost goes cross-eyed. “Those are definitely doubting eyebrows. Eyebrows that say, ‘you’re a dumbass, Scott, but I’m too polite to say it out loud’. Fearsome eyebrows, those are.”

She rolls her eyes and swats at him. “Stop staring at me and help me eat all this food before it gets cold.”

“Tell me what’s wrong with my arms.”

“Nothing’s wrong with your arms. They’re very nice arms. Very safe and secure. Good job.”

Scott doesn’t look convinced, but he settles back into his chair with a quiet “Hmph”.

He turns to pulling through the boxes of takeout one by one, his frown growing with every new reveal – until Tessa taps the box she pushed across to him a few minutes earlier.

“Oh,” he mumbles, looking abashed, and heaps the contents onto his plate. “Thanks.”

They make quiet conversation as they eat, discussing the past few days of training. Skate Canada will be upon them in less than a week, the first event of the Grand Prix for Natalie and Gabriel, and tension coils in the pit of Tessa’s stomach already. However much she tries to lose herself in the routine of training, in entire days spent drilling transitions out of a twizzle sequence, or fixing arm placements in a spin, there’s no way to forget what waits for them at the very end of all of this. It’s just one competition, and then the next, and the next – and before they even realise it, she knows, the Calgary Olympic Games will be upon them.

“Here, this is what I was talking to Marie-France about,” she says, as she scrolls back through a video on her phone, a recording of Natalie and Gabriel’s free dance from earlier that day. “I think the moment right before the stationary lift is looking a little empty. How do you feel about adding in an extra transition; do you think it would be too busy, or-“

“Hey, Tess.”

She looks up, pausing the video. “Hm?”

Across the table from her, Scott twirls a pathetic-looking string of noodles around the end of his fork, flipping the end of the noodle over and over. 

"What happened to that other program you were choreographing?" he says. "You know, the modern one that we said we were gonna keep in reserve, and then never actually needed?”

She gives him a bemused smile, tilting her head. "Exactly what you just said. I choreographed the whole thing, but we never needed it. The best case scenario, right? Why?"

"Ah, Natalie asked me earlier about how we used to choreograph our programs, if we ever had to switch midway through a season. It just got me thinking."

Half paying attention as she watches Scott twist his fork in his plate of noodles to little effect, Tessa is struck suddenly with an idea that doesn't seem all that terrible. 

"Well, I remember it all still. It's not actually that complex a program. The whole idea was to start simple, and then increase the difficulty if Natalie and Gabriel ever needed it for competition." She raises her eyes to his, pauses for a moment. "I could teach you, if you want."

"Pfft, sure. You can explain to everyone what happened when I turn up in a wheelchair on Monday morning."

The languid grin is already there on his face when he looks across to her, ready for her rebuttal; but then he meets her eyes, realises that she's being perfectly serious. 

"Wait, uh - shit," he says, his smile sliding away. "You mean, for real? You're not joking."

She raises an eyebrow. "We _are_ in a dance studio, Scott."

His eyes widen as he looks around him in a helpless manner, as if she's suddenly revealed the mirrored walls of the studio from behind a hidden curtain. "Mm-hmm. Yep, yeah. You're right," he says, nodding his head quickly. "You've got me there."

"I'll go easy on you, don't worry." 

"The only thing that worries  _me_ , Tess, is that we have very different definitions of the word 'easy'."  
  


* * *

  
She  _knew_ it was a good idea to wear her nicest pair of leggings: the sleek, fitted pair that ride low across her hips, clinging to her thighs like a second skin – not least because she’s caught Scott staring at her ass more times than she can count on one hand in the ten minutes they’ve spent warming up and running through the first few steps of the choreography.

Mirrors really do make her life so much easier.

Music plays from the speakers in the corner, giving them a generic beat to dance to. If Tessa was going to be official about it, she would pull up the track she choreographed the program to, set the ten-second snippets on loop while they work through the choreography step by step. As it is, she doesn’t think Scott will mind too much about her choice of background music for whatever it is they’re doing here.

“Right. Next section,” she says, and Scott gives an over-dramatic sigh, shaking his arms out in front of him to limber up.

She hasn’t decided yet whether he’s doing this solely to ogle her in Lycra, or dance with her, or because he’s genuinely interested in her choreography. A little of all of the above, she suspects.

The intermediate section of the dance is more complicated, so she runs through the steps slowly, feeling the rhythm of the music vibrate through the floorboards. One, two – arms raised, arched above her head. Three, four – tilt her shoulders into the angle, hold the pose for half a second, before snapping back on the downbeat. Her feet skim across the floor, never stilling, a body in perpetual motion. Even as her arms rest, there’s the twist of her torso, her hips following through, one continual movement that ripples out to the very tips of her fingers.

Scott tries his best to keep up, and almost manages it. Though he’s looser with his movements, more naturalistic than her trained poise, he hits the beats of the music as she does, his natural affinity for the music carrying him through. But the music grows to a crescendo, the rhythms building in layers upon layers, and she sees him begin to struggle; his brow furrows and his muscles tense, his shoulders coming up.

She crosses the room to the stereo and switches the music off. “Okay, that’s good for now. I’ll let you have a minute.”

In the sudden silence, his breathing is ragged and harsh.

“’Good’ is one word for it,” he says, wincing as he doubles over, placing his hands on his thighs. “A very nice word for it.”

“You’re just out of practice.”

She hops up to sit on the lip of the low windowsill. The panes of frosted glass are cool against her back, the chill leaching the warmth from her skin.

“You should have seen me when I got back onto the ice for the first time. It was like Bambi on ice. I was so glad nobody was there to witness it.”

Scott huffs a short laugh. “Yeah, right. Even if you went decades without skating, you’d remember it all as soon as you strapped those boots back on. Excuse my French, Tess, but my dancing was always shit, and has become even more shit.”

He pauses to flash a grin at her, warding off the protest that she's already gearing herself up for. "But thanks for the attempt at making me feel better. And hey, don't tell me you finally sat still for long enough to watch an entire feature film? Here I was thinking you'd go to your grave having only ever watched the first twenty minutes of Beauty and the Beast."

It's an obvious attempt to divert the conversation, but she allows it. 

“Blame Rose. Although all the Disney movies sort of merge together into one anthropomorphic blur when you marathon them for three weekends straight.”

“Good on Rose,” Scott says, with an approving nod, and then his voice drops to a quieter pitch, conspiratorial, as he leans towards her. “Did you cry?”

Tessa raises her eyebrows. “No.”

“Heartless. When I watched Bambi, I cried so hard I snotted all over Charlie’s favourite blanket.”

“How old were you then, twenty?”

“Ha ha,” Scott says, deadpan. “You’re just jealous I’m a modern man who isn’t afraid of showing emotion. These tear ducts have a direct line to the heart of my country.”

“Well, can this ‘modern man’ move his hips less like a sixty-year old with arthritis?”

The glower she receives in return is truly one of Scott’s best efforts yet.

“Here,” she says, hopping down from her perch and moving to stand behind him, setting the music to play again as she passes the stereo. “I’ll even help you out.”

He cranes his head over his shoulder with a look that’s all mock offense and bravado, slipping under her skin. “What happened to ‘that’s good for now, Scott’?”

“That was five minutes ago,” she tells him, steering his head away from her. “Eyes front. Relax.”

She may as well have told a mountain to move. As she stands in place, studying him, there’s no mistaking the tension strung through his body. The ridge of his shoulders is steepled up almost to his ears, his fingers twitching by his sides. He’s as nervous as she’s ever seen him.

“Scott, I mean it,” she says, her voice gentling. “We’re not going to do anything you’re not comfortable with. It’s just me.”

She takes a step closer to him, close enough that she imagines she can feel the restlessness humming through his bones, like a field of static electricity.

“Relax,” she repeats, meeting his gaze in the mirror, green on hazel.

The skin around his eyes is tight and puckered, his expression awash with worry. Things would be better if she could touch him, she thinks; slip into that easy over-familiarity, the extension of his body as if it’s part of her own.

“Can I?” she says, reaching out a hand towards him, and he swallows, nods.

He flinches when she touches him, her palm splaying across the broad curve of his back. She runs her hand up to the top of his shoulder, along his arm, all the while watching his reflection in the mirror, alert for any sign of discomfort.

His skin is warm to the touch, but there’s no softness in it; he’s all sinew and bone against her, muscles corded tight under her fingertips. Slowly, she runs her hand down to circle around his wrist.

“Follow me,” she says, quietly.

As the pace of the music picks up, he lets her guide his hand upwards: her palm flat against his forearm, directing the movement one way or the other. Her other hand moves to the line of his waist – and when she curves her fingers across the edge of his hip, he doesn’t flinch away this time. With the press of her fingertips against him, she moulds his body to her touch.

She doesn’t think about the fact that, when she passes her fingers across the underside of his wrist, she can feel his pulse hammering at the confines of his skin; or how her breathing has picked up now too, her cheeks flushed pink when she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. All she cares about is the way he moves for her: relaxing into the moment, melting back against her when she draws closer, murmurs a quiet “Good,” under her breath.

It’s intoxicating, the closeness of him – his back pressed against her chest so she can reach to guide his hands upwards, barely an inch of space between their hips, so close that she hardly needs the hand at his waist to guide him – and she thinks that someone really had it wrong when they decided that the man should lead on the ice.

“Show me, Tess,” he says, hoarsely. “Show me how it would work with two people.”

If it was anybody else, anywhere else, she might seize up with nerves. She might worry about what to do with her hands, might second-guess at the boundaries she’s overstepping. But this is Scott, and everything comes automatically; her body moves on instinct.

She slips around to stand in front of him.

“One hand at my hip,” she says, her voice barely trembling.

In the mirror, she watches as his right hand moves up to cover her hip. Her eyes are drawn to the veins tight underneath the white ridges of his knuckles, clenching and releasing as his fingers settle across her body.

“And the other at my waist.”

His other hand slides up to the curve of her waist.

She likes the picture they make in the mirror, the two of them; his hands are outlined against the dark fabric of her clothing, pressed against her in ways that they belong. And when they move like this, swaying together, slowly, it’s ways in which they will only ever move for one another.

His grip tightens on her, fingers clenching, and she shivers. With the way he’s pressed up against her, she knows he can feel it too.

“Is this really what you choreographed for Natalie and Gabriel?” he says, low at her ear, dipping his head so she can feel his hot breath on her neck.

“Not quite like this,” she breathes, tipping her head back against his shoulder as his hand begins to wander from her waist, across her torso – and fuck it all, she’s thinking about all the things she should be ignoring, but  _he’s_ definitely thinking about all of them too, so they’re both as useless as each other.

There’s a giddiness that sings in her veins, punch-drunk. It's rediscovery of a certain kind; when he sets his chin at the ridge of her shoulder, to where he can press his face into the crook of her neck, and thumb his hand across the side of her ribcage, remapping the memories that used to know every inch of her from touch alone. 

His fingers splay wide at her hip, crooking down across the waistband of her leggings. His touch is the spark that sets the forest ablaze, promises sweet relief to the heat-starved. She wants more, wants his hands on her bare skin, everywhere - would happily take it right here in the dance studio, her leg hitched up against the barre and the dying aircon rattling away in the background, their takeout growing cold on the stolen paper plates with little princesses on.

"You're so beautiful, Tess," he sighs, his lips so close to her neck that she can feel the words before he says them, a huff of warm air prickling her skin. "So goddamn beautiful. Some days I can barely stand it. When I come into the rink and you're already there, waiting for me by the boards, with your hair pulled behind your back, and your eyes, and your _smile_ , and God, sometimes I want-"

He takes an unsteady breath, cutting himself off. 

"Tell me," she presses, reaching up to wind her arm around the back of his neck. "Tell me what you want."

His mouth grazes the dip of her collarbone, skimming the surface.

"Fuck,  _everything_ ," he says. "I want to know everything about you now. How you sigh when someone kisses you. How your lips taste. How your body feels against mine. I want to know whether you'd still arch your back if I dragged my thumb along your spine, and how you shake when you come apart around my tongue, and how it feels to spend whole days of my life doing nothing but being with you. I want to know all of it.”

Euphoria surges through her, flashes of brilliant white, as his hands splay across her body, everywhere at once. She feels as though she's trembling with the effort of keeping herself upright. Her awareness melts down to the singular point of contact wherever he touches her: waist, stomach, ridge of her hipbones, pooling tension in the pit of her stomach. 

She makes a strange sound, something that she’s not quite in control of – caught between a sigh and a moan, clutching at the back of his neck, and he tightens his hold on her. 

There's nothing hesitant about the way he touches her now. It would be so easy to take his hand in hers, to guide him underneath the waistband of her leggings and let him ease away the ache between her thighs. Would it be anything like it was before, she wonders? He was always so eager to please, to prove himself; he would touch her however she wanted, ease a finger inside her, nice and slow, let her get herself off against his hand or his mouth. 

But she wants more than that.

"Scott," she whispers, barely able to put a voice to it, to what she wants from him: to how badly she wants _him_ , mind and body and soul, but he seems to know it all anyway when he looks at her, his eyes reflecting back her own desire, and his hands slip lower, teasing along the top of her waistband, dipping just barely underneath, and- 

There’s a sharp series of knocks at the door.

Scott buries his face into her neck, with a muffled expletive that sounds vaguely along the lines of “Fucking  _hell_ ”.

“Excuse me, miss?” comes a faint voice, drifting through the door. “Hate to kick you out like this, but I need to lock up for the night. I can’t let you stay in there all evening.”

Tessa turns to Scott, who seems to have adopted the timeless adage that if he can’t see anybody then they can’t see him, his face still pushed into the dip of her collarbone.

“Scott,” she hisses, tugging at the sleeve of his shirt. “It’s the security guard. Come on.”

“Tell him to piss off,” he mumbles. “Tell him he’s interrupting important work.”

"I'm so sorry!" she calls, ignoring Scott's suggestions. "I'll be out in just a minute."

"That's not exactly what I said,” Scott mutters.

"I took the liberty of translating."

With a heavy sigh, he releases his grip on her, and watches as she hastily attempts to make herself presentable. 

On a scale of "mild regret" to "so hideously embarrassed that she longs to write herself from existence", she's currently feeling like a solid "old enough to know better". At least an "old enough to have comfortable, private homes in which to make out and spare themselves public humiliation". If there's a God in heaven above, he'll do her a solid and make it so that the guard overlooks the flush on her cheeks as good, honest physical exertion.

“Oh, hey, hold on,” Scott says, as she starts to turn towards the door. He raises a hand to her cheek, and with infinite tenderness, brushes a stray wisp of hair back behind her ear.

In the yellow glow of the overhead lights, she can see all the tiny flecks of gold in his eyes, warm and soft, like molten metal.  

“Okay,” he says, his hand lingering. “You’re good to go now.”

She raises her eyebrows, her face softening with a smile. “That one strand of hair really sells it, thanks.”

“Any time.”

But they stand there still, unmoving, looking at one another, and it occurs to Tessa that if she kissed him now, it would be the least surprising thing they’ve done in the past three months.

“Miss?” the security guard calls, and she drops her eyes down to the ground as Scott turns away, the moment gone. “Is everything alright in there?”

With a speed that surprises even her, Scott gathers together their belongings and throws open the door with such force that it almost takes the poor security guard clean out.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, man,” Scott says. “Here, you hungry? We ordered way too much takeout; half of this stuff isn't even touched, and it'd only go to waste if it went home to Tessa's fridge. Nothing ever comes out of there again."

The security guard’s eyes widen with a mixture of emotions - predominantly confusion.

"Uh, I mean, okay," he says, drawing himself up to his full height. "Yeah, sure. Thanks."

"Great," Scott beams, and dumps at least seven boxes of takeout into the security guard's arms. "Enjoy!"

As they traipse out of the dance studio, Tessa can barely raise her eyes to meet the confused but vaguely apologetic smile of the security guard. 

Of course, she  _knew_. She’s not blind. She’s never been so foolish as to think there’s any aspect of her and Scott’s relationship that can exist without this dimension.

But the copious handfuls of paper plates and half-empty takeout boxes Scott holds over the general area of his crotch as he shuffles out of the room in front of her makes it crystal clear.  
  


* * *

  
Childhood is a fragile thing.

In a way, Tessa thinks that the root of all her problems with Scott stem from the fact that from the age of seven and nine, they were taught to view each other simultaneously as romantic prospects on the ice, and invariably off-limits outside of it.

It's hard for her to explain just how strange it is to have a relationship that is, by its very nature, both intimate and starkly public, put on show every few months for the whole world to cast judgement.

There are certain safeguards that arise out of necessity: hands are allowed here and there, as support in a lift or for character, yet never for real, never crossing that boundary. Looks exchanged must be inflamed with passion and desire, lips a breath apart, yet never touching. Snatches of emotion that pass on the ice are just that - brief, fleeting moments, to be snuffed out like fireflies once the performance is over.

Forget the flickers of heat curling across your skin, the burning imprint that his handprints leave on you, the heat that builds and builds until it scorches your lungs, until the only way you could breathe would be to let it swallow you whole.

There’s no room for distractions in the version of your life where you win the Olympic gold.

There wasn’t even room after, when they had their five little medals tucked neatly away in a glass case, and they dared to try for something more between them.

Each time ended the same way – though she couldn’t be sure whether it was fear or habit that sent her tiptoeing out of Scott’s hotel room at the crack of dawn, hair hastily smoothed, face splashed with water but lips still red and puffy. Those mornings were the only times she ever woke up before he did. It was borne partly out of necessity, creeping back to her own room in the silence of the morning, but mostly to avoid the apologies that would come tumbling from Scott’s mouth as soon as he woke to see her lying in the bed next to him.

She hated his apologies. None of his girlfriends were good enough for them, so why was she? The words were always meaningless anyway. He’d mutter a “Shit, Tess, sorry”, reassure her that they wouldn’t make the same mistake again – and in a few months’ time, at the next tour, she’d slip into his room and they’d do it all over again.

He had her so high on a pedestal that to even peer over the edge made her dizzy with nerves. There was never anywhere for her to go but down.  
  


* * *

  
Days slip through her fingers like sand, as they seem wont to do - faster and faster, even as she reaches out for them.

There's not enough time for anything: she's in the rink with Natalie and Gabriel, flicking the end of her ponytail into Scott’s face when he attempts to sneak up behind her, and instead settles for draping himself over her shoulders like a human parachute; and then she's in her apartment; or shoulder to shoulder with Scott on the office sofa at Gadbois, poring over her notebooks, reviewing video footage until the early hours of the morning; and then they're at competition, and she's barely taken a breath.

But Natalie and Gabriel win Skate Canada, and then they win Rostelecom, and she and Scott are not exactly back to where they used to be, but she can see the path that takes them there, better than they ever were before.

Then, in Korea, they lose the Grand Prix Final.

Natalie and Gabriel drop points on an extended lift and a downgraded step sequence in the free, and the Japanese team edges them out for the gold. Tessa consoles herself with the fact that there are reasons for the loss, quantifiable ways in which they can (and will) improve for next time. But the familiarity of the situation hits her in the Kiss and Cry, when the scores come through. She exchanges a look with Scott; brief and quiet, behind the backs of Natalie and Gabriel as the pair grip each other's hands tight, and knows he's thinking about it too.

Back in her hotel room, she doesn't go to bed. She's too tired to sleep, too full of worry and exhaustion and a nervous tension that churns it all into bile in her gut. (And sue her, maybe it’s a little because she can’t stop thinking about the evening in the dance studio, the memory of his hands burned into her skin. Though they haven’t talked about it since, an unspoken agreement between the two of them, she knows it occupies his thoughts too – can tell every single time she interrupts him with that faraway look in his eyes, and he can’t _quite_ look her dead in the eyes afterwards.)

Calling anyone while she's sad and alone is a bad idea.

Calling Scott while she's sad and alone - in a hotel room in South Korea, no less, small mercies that it's not the very same hotel as the night they spent together after winning in Pyeongchang - is an even worse idea, but lately it seems she's in the habit of them.

It's probably far too late for him to be awake, anyway. He probably collapsed into bed fully-clothed after they said their goodnights in the hallway. He's asleep, and he keeps his phone on silent when he goes to bed so it's not like he'll pick up; she'll just call him once, to get the notion out of her head, and then she'll have no excuse not to go to bed.

She flings an arm across the bed and pulls her phone towards her with her fingertips.

There’s a text from Rose: _I may not understand your sport, but your coat today was FLAWLESS. Hook a girl up?_  She taps out a quick reply, and then pulls up Scott’s name in her contact list and presses the call button.

The dialling tone rings - once, twice, three times - and she lets her eyes droop closed. It's pleasant, almost. She finds herself keeping time with it, measuring her breathing against the ringing - breathe in,  _brrrring_ , breathe out,  _brrrring_ , breathe in-

The ringtone cuts off abruptly.

"Hello?"

Well, shit.

"Tess? That you?"

Scott's voice is rough with sleep, the edges of his syllables crackling and low. It doesn't help the little knot of tension coiled in her stomach - in fact, it turns it into something else entirely, something that prickles across her skin, dangerous. 

"I'm going to hang up in ten seconds if you don't say anything."

Tessa scrambles to press the phone to her ear. "No, no, I'm here. Hello."

"Oh," Scott says. "Hi." Then, after a moment of silence: "What are you doing?"

"I can't sleep."

"Oh," Scott says again, with a longer pause. "You want me to come over?"

She sighs. "No. Well, yes. But no."

Through the gauzy curtain pulled across the window, she can see the glow of the city, bright sparks of yellow light against the darkness. She wonders what the view was like from the room they shared in Korea the last time, the outdoors that they never saw much of. There are things she remembers from that night much more vividly than the city skyline. 

"Okay, then..." he says, the words lingering, drawn out. "What _do_ you want?"

“Do you want to grab a drink?”  
  


* * *

  
It doesn't take long for Tessa to decide that she doesn't like the hotel bar.

She doesn't like the lights. They're too dim, making her squint at the bottom of her glass to check whether there's anything left; too mercurial, LED strips recessed into the ceiling that change colour every few seconds, as if she's a hyperactive child who needs to be entertained with pretty flashing colours. 

She doesn't like the smell of the place: like somebody's daubed the whole bar with anti-microbial gel, the marble countertops polished and gleaming. It's a  _bar -_ she's not looking for a five-star health and safety policy; she's looking for somewhere that's a little bit grotty, with alcohol that tastes like it's been distilled in a shed in the backyard, strong enough to strip her throat raw. 

Most of all, she doesn't like that for the promise of getting drunk with Scott, she'll overcome all her issues with the bar and end up there anyway. 

She sits alone in a booth at the side of the room, waiting. The cherry in her cocktail glass catches the light, gleaming bright and red as she swirls it around and around.

Footsteps approach her table, slow and purposeful, and she lets go of her cocktail, pushes the glass away into the centre of the table. 

"I was about to come and find you," she says, without looking up.

Across the table from her, Scott slides into the booth. He's pulled on a buttoned shirt and a pair of jeans, which gives Tessa an immediate indication of where this evening could be expected to lead. There's a way to meet up for friendly drinks with a co-worker, and it's not: a) choosing to meet alone in a hotel bar at eleven p.m., and b) attending said meeting in the closest thing to black-tie wear in your suitcase. 

"Sorry," he says, running a hand through his hair. "Bumped into Patch on the way down. It took longer than I thought to shake him. I think after Autumn Classic he's committed to being my guardian angel until the end of time."

"You could have invited him along too," Tessa says, half-heartedly. "Patrice is a valued member of this coaching team."

"I think Patch would rather stick his head in a vacuum cleaner than be trapped at a bar with you and me. No offense."

"None taken," she says. "Did you see Natalie earlier?"

"No, but I can imagine."

"You would have been impressed. She was single-handedly dragging the Russian pairs team out of the hotel lobby with a bottle of beer in her hand. It seemed rude to intervene."

Scott chuckles, but there's a sour tone to his laughter. "At least one person's pleased with the outcome of today."

"Come on," Tessa says, casting a knowing eye over her drinking buddy. "I know you. You never like it when it's easy."

"We still talking about the skating here?"

Tessa gives him a vacant look. “What else?”

“Sure, Tessa,” Scott says, leaning over to flick the cherry stem in her glass. “Drink your cocktail.”

She doesn't like doing what he tells her, and she likes it even less when he uses her full name - like a misbehaving child - but she likes the way he looks at her when he says it: his eyes all dark and secret, his voice dropping to a pitch that raises the hairs on her arms. In one quick movement, she downs what remains of her drink. There's a triumphant smile on her face when she tilts her head up to look at him again.

"There you go," she says. "Your turn."

And when Scott comes back from the bar with an entire bottle of imported vintage wine – the kind that would make her wince if she ever saw the price tag - she has a pretty good idea that the plan for the evening in her head aligns nicely with the plan in his.  
  


* * *

  
Scott’s laugh is nice. It’s warm and full and rich, and it spills out from him like sunlight, like he couldn’t contain it even if he wanted to.

Scott’s face is made for laughter; for the way his eyes crinkle at the corners, the lines at the sides folding in upon themselves, impossibly small, and the way his lips turn up at the edges, and the bridge of his nose scrunches. His face is all lines of laughter, broad with a painter’s brush. Nights like tonight – when he turns to Tessa, smiling, his body pressed up against hers in the darkness of their booth – it feels as though he drew them only for her.

Scott’s hand on her knee, that’s nice too. It’s heavy and warm, and she thinks perhaps he’s forgotten it’s there, because they’re three-quarters of the way through a second bottle of horribly expensive wine.

“We’re too old for this shit, Tess,” Scott sighs. “What happened to setting a good example for the younger generation?”

What’s  _not_  so nice is that Scott has reached the melancholy stage of his intoxication.

“We’re old enough to know better,” Tessa corrects him, as she pours the last of the wine into his glass. “Young enough to still try.”

“That makes no sense,” he grumbles.

“I don’t have to make sense, you just have to appreciate that I’m always right.”

“I’m not sure about-“

“Who turned the wrong way at the end of Mahler?” Tessa cuts him off with a raised finger. “Not me. Who insisted that Marina was on our side until the very end? Mm, don’t think it was me. Who vetoed what was going to be our masterpiece every single year I brought up skating to Pride and Prejudice? Shockingly, not I.”

Scott’s look of doubt splits into a grin. “Keep holding out for it, Tess,” he tells her. “One day I might give in.”

“That would require more from us than happening to be on the same ice at the same time. We’d have to actually skate together, you know.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“You think we’ve still got another Olympics left?” Tessa teases, dryly. “Eyeing up a comeback for a triple crown? Two-time champion is simply not enough for Scott Moir, I see.”

“We could do it. How old was Aljona when she won her gold medal? Older than you and me, for sure.”

“We’d break every single bone in our body trying.”

“Stop trying to apply logic to my fantasy,” Scott says. “It’s not nice.”

Tessa raises her eyebrows. “Is that what gets you going in the morning, the idea of the two of us dragging ourselves through more years of torture? I dread to think what else lives in your imagination.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell you now, am I?”

When he grins this time, she catches herself noticing the shine of his lips against his teeth, stark and white. Across the speakers, the music changes from chintzy lounge music to something slow and rhythmic, a low melody with a quiet, steady pulse.

Scott raises his head. “Hey, fancy that. Just in time for us to finish off the bottle." He downs the rest of his wine and sets the empty glass down on the table with a _clink_. "Want to dance? See how much I remember of your expert coaching?”

Tessa looks around briefly, taking in the near-empty bar around them; only a few patrons remain, most nursing their drinks alone in sequestered booths like the one she and Scott sit in. "There's no dance floor."

“So? Since when did you ever need a dance floor?"

"Dancing with you, in the middle of a hotel bar, surrounded by people I'll probably have to eat breakfast with tomorrow? I'll pass, thanks. I do still have a shred of dignity left."

"Spoilsport," Scott pouts, and slumps back against the seat.

"I'll go and get another bottle of wine," she says, glancing across to the bar. "That'll make you feel better."

Scott's hand grips tight at her knee. When she looks back over her shoulder at him, his eyes are dark, focused. Her mouth feels suddenly dry; she licks her lips, watches the way his gaze darts down to her mouth.  

"What?" she says. "Is three bottles too much for you now?"

"I'm not planning on getting blackout drunk tonight, Tess. Been there, done that."

Her eyebrows raise. "Oh? What  _were_ you planning on doing, then?"

"That's my line, Miss 'Do you want to grab a drink'."

He says it lightly, but his expression betrays the seriousness of the moment. It's always been this way with Scott. They talk, and they talk, and they talk, and if they talk long enough and laugh loudly enough, their words become meaningless and their gestures hollow; they forget that behind all of this, there's something honest, something true.

And him, with the look in his eyes that could melt glass, and she, pulse racing with a flushed kind of fever, both of them  _just_ drunk enough that it doesn't seem quite so terrifying to peer over the edge of the tectonic plates of their relationship and find a new place to fall - they deserve the honesty. 

She leans into him slightly, enough that she can smell the alcohol on his breath and watch the way his eyes widen.

“I think you should kiss me,” she says, quietly. “I think that would be a really good idea right now.”

“Glad we’re on the same wavelength,” he says, and then she doesn't think about the truth, or history repeating itself, or anything at all, actually, because his mouth is on hers, and God, all she can think is _finally_.

His lips are soft - so much softer than she remembered - and his hand is at her chin, tilting her head to meet his, and there's too much and too little happening all at once. She slips a hand around the back of his neck, tugging him closer. Her nose presses against his, nothing graceful about the way they kiss, no easy remembering of the shape and the angle, everything brand-new. 

She's vaguely aware that she's pressing him back into the leather cushions of the booth, one palm flat against his chest, the other chasing the warmth under the collar of his shirt. He kisses so sweetly, too sweetly, reverent in a way that she wants no part of - coaxing his mouth open, she pushes her tongue alongside his - and  _there's_ the fire. His fingers grip her jaw, his breath in short, harsh huffs of warmth. He forgets to be gentle now, his teeth nipping at her lip, a hand clenched tight into the fabric of her dress at her waist, pulling her close. Heat prickles at her skin where he touches her, blooms across her mouth, her tongue. It's nearly too much; like the very press of his mouth against hers will burn her, as his lips move to her jaw, down to her neck, and she lets her head fall back against the booth.

"Scott," she mumbles, his mouth at her collarbone, blazing heat - but vaguely aware that despite the deserted appearance of the bar around them, they are _technically_ still in public. The last thing she wants in the entire world is for Natalie or Gabriel - or, God forbid, Patrice - to waltz back in and find them now. "Mine or yours?"

"Mh-hmm," he mumbles, and for a minute she forgets what she was asking in the first place, as he sweeps his mouth back up along the curve of her neck.

"That's not - not an answer. Mine or yours?"

"Yes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, having a boatload of exam revision to do only makes me procrastinate through writing even more. Thanks to Marie and Marcia for their wonderful beta skills and for always being there to talk things through when I get trapped in a plot web of my own making. 
> 
> In additional news, the Writers' Guild is running a Throwback challenge this month! We're calling any and all writers to post a one-shot throwing back to one of their previous works, with the aim of posting between 27th-31st May. If you're interested, head over to the link below for more details. It'd be wonderful to have as many people as possible taking part.
> 
> https://idontneedtobeforgiven.tumblr.com/post/184599490892
> 
> Thanks to all those who read, whether you comment or kudos or simply pass by like a ship in the night. You all make writing for this fandom one of the most rewarding experiences. And don't worry, the next chapter will pick up *precisely* where this one left off.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick forewarning that this chapter contains moderately explicit sex. If you're not here for that, skip to the very last scene and you should be good. Enjoy!

Tessa’s hotel room is kept to an exacting standard.

“An uncluttered room is an uncluttered mind,” her mother used to tell her. And even though it’s been at least twenty years since she lived under the same roof as Kate, the old habits still stand.

Tucked away along a hallway on the fourteenth floor of the hotel, her room is neat and quiet: the bed made up, contents of her suitcase arranged on a chair by the window, curtains waving in the updraft of heat from the radiator. Everything is still.

And then, with a sudden clattering of noise, she and Scott stumble inside. He’s half-undressed already, the top buttons of his shirt open. Her cheeks are flushed, hair mussed around her shoulders. The deep violet fabric of her halterneck dress is wrinkled at the hip, creased from the imprint of his hand where he pressed it against her under the table at the hotel bar. His hands find her hips again now, pulling her close as the door slams behind them.

“Just to be clear,” he mumbles, against her lips, as she divests him of his belt. “This isn’t because we’re both drunk?”

“No,” she says.

The weight of him pushes her backwards, her back thudding against the closed door. Something digs into her skin, cold metal—the door handle, maybe—but she doesn’t care, not as she undoes the rest of the buttons on Scott’s shirt, and he slips a hand around to palm her ass.

“Or because you got so bored of hotel rooms that you decided anything was better than a night alone?”

His leg slips between hers, making her suck in a breath. “No.”

“ _Or_ ,” he continues, mouth barely leaving hers—like if they break contact, the moment will be stolen away from between them. “Did you suddenly realise that we’re in South Korea, and some weird kind of Pavlovian sex reflex kicked in?”

She pauses in unbuttoning his pants to look him directly in the eyes.

For a brief second, he manages to keep a straight face. Then, his expression splits into a grin—that particular, smug smile that tells her he’s having far too much fun at her expense.

Rolling her eyes, she pushes him away. “Shirt, off. Hurry it up.”

Her boots are next to go; unceremoniously kicked off her feet, they thud against the wall and topple into a haphazard pile alongside Scott’s. When she straightens back up again, he’s bare-chested, his shirt crumpled on the floor—and she freezes.

She’s seen Scott shirtless more times than she can count: in the grotty, grim changing rooms at the rink, or ducking down to change in the backseat of her parents’ car, or in hotel rooms identical to this one; in more ways than she’s ever seen anybody else. But pale light streams in from the street lamps outside the darkened window, outlining Scott’s body in a faint halo, and there’s something strange about the newness of it all. The years soften the memories just so. She couldn’t say whether the haze of freckles above his sternum was there three years ago; or the faint scar along the ridge of his hip bones, did he always have that?

Her hand hovers in the space between them, suddenly unsure.

“You don’t have to ask permission, you know,” he says, noticing her hesitation. “It’s alright.”

She nods, brusque. “I know,” she says.

But she doesn’t move.

These are beats she knows well: the quiet, still hallways; the hotel room; him half-naked before her. It’s like an old home video played through a distorting lens—something half-remembered, off by fractions of a degree, unfamiliar enough to give pause.

In the silence, Scott reaches out and folds his hand around hers.

“Hey,” he says, a sudden seriousness in his gaze. “Tess, listen to me. You’re allowed this.”

He brings their joined hands to his chest, resting against his sternum.

Underneath her fingertips, she can feel the solid warmth of him, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat thumping. It calms her to focus on that: on the security of him, the instinctive knowledge. In every heartbeat, there’s the reminder that this is _Scott_ , and she has known him since she was barely old enough to remember his face, his smile, his laugh. At the end of it all, that knowledge will be there still.

Slowly, her hand uncurls across his skin.

“Is this okay?” she says, glancing up at him. “Tell me if it’s not.”

There’s a mesmerised look on his face, his eyes flicking down to watch her hand between them: her fingers splayed across the ridges of his body, her skin pale and white against the darker glow of his. He shivers, nods.

Emboldened, she trails a hand down his abdomen, the muscles twitching at her touch.

“This?” she says, softer.

He makes a quiet noise of assent, low and languid.

“And this?” she says, as she leans in and presses her lips to the underside of his jaw.

The line of his body is trigger taut; she can feel the hardness of him between them when she kisses him again, jutting against her hip. She wants to relearn everything, wants to catalogue every detail of his body anew, itemise the ways in which he is hers, has always been, will always be.

“Whatever the hell you want, Tess,” he mumbles, distracted, as her hand slips underneath the waistband of his jeans.

Over the soft cotton of his boxers, she pulls her hand along the length of him and his breath catches, hips nudging forwards against her hand.

There’s a headiness in the way he reacts to her.

He doesn’t protest when she presses him back against the wall; nor when she drops to her knees in front of him, easing his jeans down across the ridge of his hips; or when she slips his cock out from his boxers, passes her hand across the glistening head to wrap her fist around the base of him.

He just watches, his eyes pitch-dark and focused, so still that she’d hardly think she had her hand around him.

Slowly, she leans in. There’s a vein running along the underside of his shaft, pulsing against her palm. Without thinking, she traces her tongue along it, up to the head; the taste is salt-sweet on her lips.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hisses, throwing his head back. His fists clench against the wall, scrambling for purchase.

“If you ruin the wallpaper, you’re paying for the damages,” she says, warm against his skin.

He gives a breathless laugh. “Pretty sure you’re kind of responsible for whatever-”

She licks along the length of his cock again, base to tip, and whatever he was trying to convince her of is lost in a mumbled stream of curse words.

“Mm-hmm,” she says, pulling back to slick her hand along the length of him. “That’s what I thought.”

He doesn’t even attempt a reply, lips parting as she rolls her thumb across the head of his cock, rubbing gently at the slit. The skin is red and flushed, his cock already leaking against her palm. She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth as she works her hand along the length of him, glancing up every so often to gauge his reaction.

His eyes are closed, his head tipped back against the wall. His mouth moves in a whispered string of sounds that she can barely hear, but it makes the tension coil in the pit of her stomach, creeping and slow.

Leaning forwards, she licks at the tip of his cock, swirling her tongue around the head before taking him into her mouth. He groans, deep and languid. One of his hands moves to the back of her head, sweeping the hair back from her shoulders and fisting it in his grasp.

The feel of him is heavy against her tongue, a dull ache in her jaw. She hollows her cheeks, increases the pressure; the grip on her hair tightens accordingly.

Kneeling on the carpet of the hotel room floor, fibres soft against her bare skin, she can feel herself growing wetter by the minute. Her dress has rucked up around her hips, and she presses her thighs together as Scott groans again, forgetting to measure the strength of his grip, pulling hard enough that she has to concentrate to stay on his cock.

Her tongue slips around him, firm, pressing up and around his head, where she can feel him pulsing with need.

“ _Shit,_ Tess,” he gasps.

His hips stutter forwards, jerking up into her mouth; his cock bumps against the roof of her mouth, perhaps rougher than he intended, but she gives a soft moan.

Before long, he’s strung so tight that his hips twitch with every pass of her lips, thrusting just barely into her mouth. She pulls her lips away from him, wraps her hand around him instead, and strokes her closed fist along him; her palm comes away shiny with her own saliva, and the sound of his moan hitches, even deeper.

“Tess,” he stutters, the semitones pitching as she rolls her fingers wetly over his head. “You gotta - you need to hold off for a bit, or else this is going to end way sooner than we both want.”

“Who says this isn’t want I want?” she says, nudging her lips against the side of his cock.

“Okay,” Scott concedes, breathless. “Indulge me, then. I want to get you off first.”

It would be a lie to say she doesn’t consider picking up the pace, sliding her mouth over him until he spills against her tongue. But she suspects he’d be monumentally pissed about it later, if he didn’t get to make her come at least twice before him.

With reluctance, she accepts his hand up.

“That’s the first time you’ve _ever_ stopped me from getting you off,” she says, slightly disgruntled.

“Pour one out for personal growth,” Scott exhales, leaning back against the wall with a sigh.

He looks more than a little uncomfortable, his cock red and aching, but she’s hard pressed to find any sympathy for him.

“I wouldn’t mind a back-track,” she says, bending down to brush the carpet fibres off her dress.

“Later. Maybe when I’m more with it, so it doesn’t feel like I’m about to pass out every time you wrap your lips around me.”

Straightening up, she raises an eyebrow at him. “That good?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles, with a small smile. “You don’t need any encouragement.”

She steps forward, his arms opening for her, fitting her neatly against the curve of his body. His skin is warm, radiating heat; his mouth is too, when he lifts his head from the wall to kiss her, sweet and soft.

There’s a reverence when his lips meet hers, a silent communion between her body and his, and she thinks that if Scott were a religious man, he would have deified her a thousand times over.

His tongue ghosts across the outline of her mouth, teasing her bottom lip open as he parts her thighs with a knee, giving her a taste of the friction she needs. But with her body flush against his, she can feel every inch of him—including his cock, still hard at her hip.

She has absolutely no intention of grinding against his leg when a better alternative has presented itself to her.

Reaching down, she pulls aside her underwear, shifting her hips until she can feel the hardness of his cock pressing against her. By the way his eyes widen, it doesn’t take him long to realise it either.

His hands move to the curve of her waist, gripping tight.

“Okay?” she says, smiling slightly when he nods—before the breath catches in her throat as he pushes forwards, letting his cock slip against her, wet and firm, slicking easily through her folds.

Her head tips back, and he takes the opportunity to press his lips against the exposed line of her neck. She feels no longer grounded; she is formless, liquid gold, as he grinds his hips into her, the head of his cock pushing at her entrance.

“You’re so wet for me, Tess,” he says, low against her skin, and she shivers.

His grip settles, softens, his cock thrusting between her thighs, dragging slowly against her. She bites her lip, her teeth digging into the soft flesh.

“Want me to fuck you like this?” he says. “Up against the wall, your legs around my waist, thighs spread apart for my cock. Would you like that?”

“Yes,” she breathes.

His cock slips against her with every thrust, maddeningly close; all she would have to do is reach down and fit him inside her, and she’d be there, clenched around him, that burn of heat and desire and wanting.

“I bet you were thinking about it the whole evening. I bet you got yourself off imagining it, the two of us like this,” he says, his palms flattening, moulding against her body. “Tell me how you want it, Tess. Tell me what you want. I’ll do it.”

She catches one of his hands between hers, moves it to the back of her neck, where the hook of her dress is fastened.

“Get this off me,” she says, rolling her hips forwards against him. When she presses down, hard, the head of his cock dips inside her and he stifles a groan. “And _hurry_.”

He makes quick work of the various clasps and zips; whether due to the many hours spent helping her into (and out of) her costumes, or the breathy, low noises she begins to make as he thrusts between her thighs, she couldn’t say. But as he guides her to turn, the open zipper of her dress letting cool air slip against her skin, he lingers briefly. His hand slides inside her dress, splaying across her hip, her stomach.

She can feel it in his touch, the same way she would see it in his eyes if she looked back at him now: something quiet and possessive, taking hold of them both.

Thumb rubbing against her skin, he leans forward, draws her closer.

“Talk to me,” he whispers, his mouth nipping along the ridge of her spine, melting heat. His fingers slip down over her underwear, between her thighs, to cup his palm around the heat of her.

“Scott,” she sighs, canting her hips into the warm press of his hand.

He slides his other hand down to the base of her spine, where the dress begins to curve over the swell of her ass.

“What is it, Tess?” he murmurs, breath warm at her neck, and she shivers. “You want me to move my hand? Want me to do this?”

Slowly, he teases one finger along the silk of her underwear. The material is already wet to his touch, and she gives a quiet moan.

She loves it when he’s like this: making her work for it, giving as good as he gets.

“This is what you want, isn’t it?” he says, as he traces a fingertip around her clit, passes it over the silk of her underwear, circling, letting her twist up against his fingers.

She squeezes her thighs together, sucking in a shaky breath—but before she can collect herself, he presses his thumb firm at her clit and she gasps, melting back against him.

“Or is this it?” he says, rubbing his fingers through her folds, pressing the silk in tight to her. “Mm, I think this is it.”

“Please,” she gasps, pushing her hips back into him. “I want your fingers in me.”

He gives a tight groan. At her back, she can feel his hips thrust shallowly against her, his cock beginning to rub at her ass.

“Are you sure?” he mutters, his voice strained, pitching. “Are you sure you don’t want this?”

And he pulls aside her underwear, taking his cock in hand and dragging the head of it through her folds with a slick, wet sound.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” she moans, bending forwards. “Yes, _please_ , do that again.”

He pulls away briefly, then parts her with his cock again, his hard length pressing against her. At the end of his thrust, he teases his head around her entrance, playing with her wetness.

“Here?” he says, folding her down with a palm splayed at her back, the top half of her dress falling away from her body.

“Yes,” she breathes, thighs trembling.

He pushes forwards against her, through her folds once more, and she groans.

“Come _on_ , Scott,” she whines. “Hurry _up_ , I-”

The sound dies in her throat as he thrusts his cock inside her, inch by inch, letting her feel all of it.

“ _Oh_ ,” she gasps, clenching down onto him.

His hand rubs at her back, smoothing across the expanse of her skin, reaching down to spread her legs apart so that he can slick a little deeper into her.

The feeling of him within her is like nothing she remembers; it’s molten and rich, his hips slipping up to hers in an easy rhythm. He pushes into her again, achingly slow, and she moans, focusing on the pull of her abdominal muscles as she circles her hips down onto him.

She needs it faster, harder, his teeth on her skin, his hand tangled in her hair.

But abruptly, he pulls out of her with a wet sound. She makes an impatient noise, turning to look up at him.

His cheeks are flushed, his pupils blown wide, the head of his cock shiny and swollen with arousal as he drops his hand from her, stepping backwards. If the lack of blood to the rest of his body doesn’t kill him, she thinks she might finish the job.

“I told you I was going to get you off first,” he says.

She glares at him. “Yeah, you were on the way there.”

He gives a slight smile, shaking his head—and she wants to ask him how can _possibly_ be so calm and level-headed when, a minute ago, he was whispering dirty talk into her ear, with her clenched around his cock.

“Sorry, Tess,” he says. “Not how this works.”

She grabs his hand.

There’s no time any more for platitudes or teasing, the ache between her thighs too much to bear, like she might explode if he doesn’t put _something_ back inside her soon—fingers, tongue, cock, she’s not fussy.

“Fine,” she says, slipping her dress off from where it’s banded around her waist, and leads him over to the bed. "If you want it like  _that_..."

The bedsprings creak underneath her weight as she settles herself back against the headboard, spreading her thighs apart, and she sees him swallow.

His eyes sweep across her, widening, as though he’s drinking in the sight of her: naked but for the slip of her underwear, her body cast into shadow by the statue of his. He looks at her the way she imagines seafarers used to look up at the night sky, searching the darkness for the bloom of starlight cusped on the horizon. She is his North Star, and unerringly, unfailingly, she will bring him home.

As he stands there, she finds herself realising that if what she sees in his gaze in that moment is anything like what he sees in hers, there’s only one way this could ever end.

“Scott,” she whispers.

Her voice seems to wake him from his stillness; he blinks, twice, his eyes wide and overwhelmed.

“Come here.”

Joining her on the bed, he leans down and smooths a palm across the inside of her thigh, evidently needing as much as she does to feel the security of their connection. His fingers tease along the edge of her underwear, running along the delicate black lace, but he doesn’t look down. His eyes remain fixed on hers, holding her gaze.

“I trust you,” she says, quiet. “Please.”

She doesn’t quite know why she says it; or why she feels absurdly nervous, like there’s more meaning in this moment than any of the ones that have come before; but there’s something that tells her these are the words he needs to hear. By the way the look in his eyes solidifies, his gaze turning downwards, she’s right on the mark.

Silently, he slips his hand beneath the silk of her underwear and presses his fingers against her clit. She tips her head back, throwing a hand across her mouth to muffle the groan.

“I’ve got you,” he says, low, as he drags his fingers along the length of her folds, slick and wet. Rubbing at her entrance with one hand, he frees the other to pull her underwear down her legs, tossing the scrap of silk aside.

His touch sparks like a struck match, burning away the pleasant haze of sensation into something sharp and urgent. She can’t hold on for him, can’t help the way her hips roll shamelessly against his fingers. It’s too much, all of it: his fingers, teasing her open, but the weight of his palm too, when he settles himself between her legs and presses her thigh flat against the bed, and his breath, hot against her as he lowers his head.

When he dips his mouth to her, she almost forgets everything right there and then.

The strokes of his tongue are quick and short, lapping through her folds in time with the rock of her hips against his face. His nose presses against her clit, bumping in sharp flushes of pleasure every time he pushes forwards to lick into her – and she gives a hitching sigh, the sound taut and strange.

Looking down, she can see the muscles in his shoulders rippling as he surges forwards, down onto her, again and again, his head lowered between her thighs. The sight makes all the feeling in her body pool low in her, molten.

“Come on,” he mutters against her. “Let me hear you, Tess. I want to hear you.”

Her words are half-breath, off-pitch: “Make me.”

She’s _sure_ she sees his hips stutter at that, feels the breath catch against her.

The next time he lowers his mouth to her, he traces his tongue up and along her folds, down to her entrance, circling round, the press of his tongue maddeningly light, teasing.

Her head falls back against the headboard. Every inch of her is brought down to the singular point of contact where his tongue circles against her, so _close_. Her thighs tense against his grip, straining. There’s no way to ease the ache that builds in her, against his mouth as he flicks his tongue across her.

She wants to tell him to stop it, that she can barely take any more—but instead, she wraps a hand into the hair at the back of his head, and _pulls_ , tight.

With a groan, his hips thrusting forwards against the bed, he slips his tongue inside her.

“ _Fuck_ , Scott, yes,” she moans, twisting her fingers into his hair. Her hips press up, jerking against his mouth. She doesn’t care about anything else any more; not who might overhear them, or whether she’s too loud, too quiet, too forward, not bold enough. There’s only the warm slick of his tongue as he pushes it inside her, the heat of his mouth searing, burned into her flushed skin.

She doesn’t have to remind him of anything. He knows exactly how she likes it: in the short, sharp thrusts of his tongue, teasing at her entrance, then licking along the length of her; before finally burying his tongue inside her, so deep that her knuckles whiten against the back of his head.

Her back arches off the bed, thighs pressing together around him.

It’s too much for her to bear, too good, her sighs high-pitched and hitching when he sinks his tongue into her.

“Scott,” she gasps, pulling at his hair. “Scott, you’re gonna have to stop soon, I can’t-“

He licks a broad stripe against her, his nose pressed up tight to her wetness, and she gives a shuddering moan.

“Scott,” she tries again, but the breath catches in her throat; and when he raises his head, inquisitive, she finds herself shaking her head and pulling his mouth back down to her.

Fuck it.

She’s waited years for this.

There’s no point in holding out for some vague notion of sentimentality. Particularly when he’s _so_ keen to get her off.

Bringing a hand to her breast, she takes a nipple between her fingers, teasing. Her hips buck up against his mouth, the pace increasing, and he gives a satisfied hum, slipping his arms under her thighs to pull her more firmly onto his tongue. The new angle makes her moan and pinch her nipple, hard.

“ _Yes_ ,” she breathes, as he drives his tongue into her. “ _Please_ , Scott, harder.”

Keeping one hand wrapped around her thigh, he reaches up with the other to palm at her breasts. She sighs, arching up against his touch, letting her own hand fall away.

She forgot how good it was: being with someone who knows her body like his own, who knows how to make her sing with pleasure.

Even as his tongue parts her folds, delving deep, he plays with her breasts: squeezing them in his grip, circling a nipple with his thumb, before rolling the pad of his finger across the hardened bud.

Having sex with Scott is so _simple._ The hum of tension builds in her without thought, her thighs beginning to tremble with the anticipation. She knows he can sense it too, knows she’s close, by the way he redoubles his efforts. His mouth is relentless against her, his forearm curling securely over her thigh, keeping her at his mercy.

“ _Oh_ ,“ she stutters, as he pulls her hips up, changing the angle just enough that he can drag his tongue across the entirety of her, the sound slick and wet. “Oh, _fuck_ , Scott.”

Dimly, she recognises the sound of the bedsprings groaning as he rolls his hips against the bed, pressing his cock down into the mattress.

She can feel the tipping point of her release, his tongue pushing back inside her, wet and hot and perfect, as she brings her fingers to her clit and rubs.

It’s nothing like she remembered, nothing like she thought it would be; it’s more and more besides, the world splintering, fracturing into the streaking heat of his tongue against her, palm at her breast, her fingers at her clit.

Her back arches off the bed, head tipping back, lips parting with a breathless, pitching moan. All the muscles in her body pull tight, seizing upwards, and his grip clenches at her thighs, where his tongue sinks into her, over and over. The burning flush licks across her skin, all-consuming. She welcomes it, begging for relief, the pleasure cresting, overtaking her.

“Scott,” she whines, tugging at his hair.

Breathing deeply, he removes his tongue from inside her, finishes her off the way he always did. He licks through her folds in firm, slow strokes, wringing every last inch of pleasure from her as her thighs squeeze together, her hand pushing his head forwards, her breath hitching, stuttering upwards.

With a quiet cry, she comes apart around his mouth.  
  


* * *

  
In the long, languid minutes that follow, it’s as much as she can do to remember to blink, and breathe, and pay enough attention to her own body to realise that Scott has removed his tongue from her, turning instead to press careful, sweet kisses to the inside of her thigh.

Her head feels fuzzy, over-burdened by its own weight, like if she tried to lift it from the bed, she would simply melt back into the sheets.

Scott’s hand slips into hers, gentle and grounding.

“You good?” she hears, the words drifting up through the scrambled haze of her awareness.

Slowly, she nods. “Uh-huh. Give me a second.”

Her hand tightens around his, and he squeezes back.

Gradually, she feels the breath return to her, her muscles deciding to take up shape once again; or at least, enough that she can inch herself back up to a sitting position, leaning against the headboard of the bed. Scott sits up too, moving with her. His other hand reaches out to curl loosely across her ankle, idle, like he can’t bear to be with her and not touch her. The sensation soothes the both of them, she thinks, pulls her back to her own body.

He sits there, watching her, careful and quiet.

“If you want to leave it there, we can,” he starts, rubbing a thumb at her ankle. “We don’t have to do anything else.”

Tessa leans forward, pushing herself off the bed.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, pressing her lips to his—and that’s that.

She can taste herself there on his tongue when she kisses him, musky and unfamiliar. Her body curves against his, the fullness of her breasts grazing his bare chest, and despite herself, she finds the tension returning to her, prickling along her flushed skin.

In the sweetness of the kiss, she winds a hand down and wraps it around his cock. He’s messy with her saliva and still slick with pre-come, like iron against her grip. She can barely imagine how he held out while he was getting her off; or how he held out the time before that, and the time before that.

One day, she thinks she’ll have to find out _exactly_ how far he can go—but not tonight. Tonight is a homecoming.

Leaning back against the pillows, she spreads her legs apart with a hand between her thighs. His eyes flick downwards, following her movements, and she sees him swallow, his jaw setting with a slight tremor.

“Come on, then,” she says, raising her eyebrow.

He doesn’t need telling twice. Her stomach tightens with anticipation as he kicks off his boxers and settles himself between her legs, the bed dipping underneath their combined weight.

“Talk to me, Tess,” he reminds her, bracing himself with a forearm against the bed, one hand set at her waist. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“Slow,” she breathes, reaching down and guiding his cock to her. Carefully, she slides him through her folds, gathering slickness.

She’s still reeling from the effects of her first orgasm, everything over-sensitive, hyper-aware of the pull of her muscles. There’s a gentle pressure as he sets his head at her entrance, a slight stretch; and then, so gradual that she barely even recognises when it begins, he inches his cock inside her. The movement is painstakingly slow, full, bedsprings groaning underneath them.

Her head tips back, the noise caught in her throat.

He’s so thick inside her, stretching her out. She feels the gentle burn of him against her tired muscles, knows that she’ll be aching from it tomorrow, but she doesn’t care.

When he bottoms out inside her, it’s with a quiet groan, her body clenching around him.

“Again,” she says, breathless; and his cock pulls out of her with a slick sound, a sudden emptiness, before he re-adjusts himself and slowly thrusts back into her.

Her hands move up to his back, splaying across his shoulder blades. She can feel the pull of the muscles under her fingertips as he fucks into her; the quick slip out, followed by the slow drag of his cock pushing back inside her. Slickness gathers between her legs, her own wetness smeared across her inner thighs.

His head is bowed, watching every micro-expression that passes across her face, gauging her reaction. Each time, he alters the angle of his thrust, or the pressure of his grip on her waist, until he finds the combination that makes her arch up against his thrusts with a panting moan.

“Please,” she gasps, and he shudders at the sound, his cock slipping inside her. “Faster.”

With the quiet slap of skin on skin, he begins to drive harder into her, his hand clenching into her waist. His eyes burn into her, his gaze never wavering, like he wants to carve the minutes into his memory.

But the pressure builds in her, the pleasure climbing, and the angle of him thrusting down into her isn’t enough, has never _quite_ been enough to get her there.

She pushes up onto her knees, his cock slipping out of her.

“Here,” she says, turning to reposition herself with her back to him. “Like this.”

There’s a brief moment where his touch leaves her altogether, and she feels utterly void. Then, his knees are beneath hers, and his breath is warm on her neck, his palms splaying across her breasts, and when she sinks back down against him, over his cock, it’s as perfect a moment as she could have asked for.

His lips press against her pulse point, his teeth digging in at the exact moment his cock fills her once again. There’ll be a mark there tomorrow, she knows, purpling against her pale skin, but she won’t hide it. She’ll leave it for everyone to see, along with the half-moon crescents of her nails in his back, marking them as two people who belong solely to one another.

The thought makes her shiver with pleasure. She sighs, lifting herself up onto her knees and sinking back over his cock, riding him against the mattress.

His hands cup her breasts, rolling her nipples between his thumb and forefinger, and she feels the tension building in her for a second time, flushed and familiar. Her head tips back against his shoulder, letting him take her weight.

“Are you close?” he groans, thumb teasing around the pink circle of her hardened nipple.

She nods, her eyes squeezing shut. “Yeah,” she breathes. “You?”

His breath is harsh against her now, his hips driving up into her with uncontrolled need.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice barely a mutter against her neck. “Want to wait for you, want to see you when you come.” He pulls gently at her waist, guiding her to turn. “Can I-?”

“Mm-hmm,” she nods, pushing herself up off his cock and turning to face him.

His hands, when they settle at her waist, are trembling with effort—as is his whole body now, she can see. He’s barely restrained, holding on for her.

She places a hand underneath his chin, tips his head up to look at her. Her fingers grasp the ridge of his jaw, his eyes big and wide.

“Fuck me,” she tells him. “Hard and fast, Scott _."_

Holding his gaze, she sinks down over him, and he groans so long and so loud that for a second, she thinks she’s lost him.

But his hips begin to roll up into her, his hands at her waist helping her move. He knows the pace to set: the exact rhythm that has her shuddering around him, grasping at his hands, at the back of his head as he leans down to take a nipple into his mouth, sucking hard.

“Yes, _just_ like that,” she gasps, bucking her hips forwards onto him. His cock pulses inside her, hard and full, driving as deep as he can, and she feels the beginnings of her release creep up on her, the fluttering tightness in the pit of her stomach.

Scott leans forwards over her, pressing her back into the bed until she has to prop her arms up behind her to support her weight.

Every muscle in her body trembles, too stretched, too full, the wave of her second orgasm cresting upon the first. All around her, it’s the sound of him, his breath hitching as he drives into her, their slickness between them; and the steady throb of his cock inside her, streaks of heat racing under her skin, burning into her.

“Come for me, Tess,” he says, shakily, kissing her deep. “Let me hear you.”

She lets her head fall back, hair tumbling in sweat-soaked strands across her shoulders, her lips parting.

Every thrust of his cock drives a panting moan from her. The moment she lets go, he’ll follow her over that edge. All she has to do is pivot herself down onto his cock, her breasts swaying with the movement, every fibre of her being crying out for her release twice over, clenching tight.

She would hold onto this moment forever if she could, she thinks—the two of them moving together, sweat dripping from his skin, the sheets rumpled around them, closer than she can ever remember them being.

But his hips stutter up against hers, that languid groan rumbling from deep within his chest, and she knows he won’t last any longer.

Leaning forwards, she presses her mouth to his, lets the sweetness of their kiss linger for a moment, his lips so gentle against hers; before she slides herself once, twice, three times over his cock—and, with a shuddering, pitched moan, she lets the two of them find the release they deserve.  
  


* * *

   
When she wakes the next morning, it takes her a moment to remember where she is.

There’s a strange ache tugging at her body, and her arms, when she shrugs her shoulders upwards, testing, have an odd heaviness to them, like she’s just woken after a hard day of training at the rink. Not to mention the weight pressed against her stomach, something that keeps her pinned down when she tries to shift in place.

Somewhat confused, she looks down, blinking bleary-eyed in the gentle sunlight streaming through the hotel windows, and—oh.

Scott’s head is pillowed atop her stomach, his cheek pressed against her bare skin, the fine strands of his hair feathered out across her body. He’s fast asleep, snoring quietly.

And they’re both naked.

The haze of memories drifts back to her, all soft washes of pleasant colour: of Scott, and the sound of him, the feel of him, steel on silk.

Last night happened.

She supposes that fact should worry her.

But all the typical warning signs are gone. There’s no guilt; no worry, or shame, or regret.

She examines her feelings one by one, slowly, like turning over stones at the bottom of her garden, braced to uncover something crawling and ugly.

Here, instead, is contentment; here is relief, and security; and underlying it all, deep as a wellspring, is something that sets her pulse thudding in her ears, the rush of it coursing through her, flying under skin and bone, until it’s all she can do to lie still, resist the urge to wake him with her lips on his.

With trembling fingers, she lowers her hand to his back.

“Scott,” she whispers.

He shifts in his sleep, mumbling. She watches the muscles under his closed eyelids flicker through some dreaming state, his fingers clenching reflexively at her waist. And then, ever so slowly, his eyes open.

Under the golden light of dawn, she’s the only one to witness his first, hazy moments of consciousness give way. He looks between them, at her naked body, and back up to her, recognition dawning.

For a long moment, they look at each other, quiet.

Then, a smile splits across Scott’s face. He makes a funny little noise, happy, and buries his head against her stomach.

A breathless laugh bursts forth from her. “Morning.”

“Mm,” he mumbles, voice drowsy and warm. “Morning.”

“Sleep well?”

“Like a brick,” he says, turning to press his lips against the flat of her stomach, before he rolls away from her and stretches his arms up to the headboard with a small groan. “God, that was the best sex I’ve had in a long time. Maybe ever.”

She smiles, tipping her head to the side to watch him. “Probably ever.”

With a delighted grin, he glances over to her. “Wait, what was that? Could I have that again? Did I just hear you say that was the best sex you _ever_ had?”

“Don’t be smug,” she says, lifting her knee and poking him with her foot. “Or I won’t give you the chance to improve on last night.”

Scott doesn’t look abashed in the slightest, his face all but glowing with pride. Catching her ankle, he pulls her towards him, reaching across her body to roll her up onto his chest. She squeaks in surprise.

“Scott!”

“What?” he grins, setting his hands at her waist.

Her legs tangle with his, his knee slipping between her thighs, pressing against her in a way that’s unfairly distracting. She came _twice_ last night, for God’s sake - there’s no need for her body to react the way it does to his presence.

“Is this not your speed?” he says, pushing his leg up against her, and she feels the flush rising on her cheeks. “Prefer it hard and fast?”

Tessa concentrates very hard on not moving her hips one inch. “You know I do.”

He raises an eyebrow at her, thumb rubbing across her hip; and then, with an exhale, he flops back against the bed.

“Let me make sure I haven’t pulled a muscle first,” he says, and she grins, glancing across to the clock on the bedside table.

“We’ve got a few hours until we need to be at the airport. Plenty of time to get your breath back.”

“Uh-huh. Your shower looks nice and spacious.”

“Have you _seen_ the shower in this room? That’s a generous assessment.”

“More hopeful, really.”

She rolls her eyes, settling her chin atop his chest. “Wait until we get back to Montreal. The shower in my apartment is much nicer.”

Scott’s eyes light up. “Is that a promise?”

“As much of one as you’re going to get.”

“Sweet.”

In the quiet minutes that follow, he trails a hand absentmindedly along her spine, dragging his knuckles at the hollow just above her ass. She closes her eyes again, turning to rest her head against him. With her ear pressed to his chest, she can feel the breath rumble through his body, the steady, slow rhythm of his inhale and exhale.

There’s nothing different about them now compared to yesterday, beyond the fact that they’re openly discussing having sex again.

His body still moves the same against hers, that solid, comforting warmth.

His smile still looks the same.

His hand still feels the same, when she reaches down to entwine her fingers with his.  

And within her, she knows that this is _good_. This is what they’re supposed to be, what they’ve been striving towards for the past twenty-eight years of their existence together, without even realising it.

No guilt, no fear, no shame.

The two of them are a little older, wiser—changed, perhaps, in ways that scared her at first. But the things that burned away in the ashes of the last three years have made it so they can be what they are now.

There’s freedom in that realisation like she’s never known before.

Scott traces his thumb gently over hers, looking down at their joined hands. “What’re you thinking?”

“Nothing much,” she says, tilting her head towards him with a smile. “About life. About you, mostly. Us.”

He raises his eyebrows. “And? Any conclusions?”

“Just one.”

Propping himself up with an arm behind his head, he indicates for her to continue.

“I’m happy,” she says, simply. “This works.”

And she realises she’s not even afraid of saying the words out loud, doesn’t worry what she’ll see in his eyes, always too vulnerable, too honest. Because she _knows_ him, beyond thought, knows deep within her bones that she wouldn’t be feeling this way if there wasn’t something instinctive responding within him too.

Before the reply even comes out of his mouth, she knows the answer. But it’s nice to hear it anyway.

“Yeah,” he says, his eyes crinkling into a smile— _her_ smile, the gentle one that scrunches up all the lines on his face. “I think so too.”

The force of her happiness catches her by surprise.

Without even realising it, she finds herself pressing her forehead to his, her mouth to his, smiling blindly against his lips, so wide that she fears her mouth might crack—but she can’t fathom ever being able to contain it again. Not here, in the hotel room with him, or downstairs in the lobby, when she knows the questions will come flying at them from all directions.

Maybe she’ll tell them the honest truth of it.

That, despite it all, hope blazes in her. Hope for the way his hand moves to her waist, pulling her close against him as his other hand tangles in her hair; and for the sunlight on her skin, bursting where he kisses her; for the fierce, surging joy of his body as hers, and her body as his, one half of a whole.

This is how it starts, she’ll tell them.

A leap of faith.

 


	15. Chapter 15

What surprises Tessa is how little anything changes afterwards.

Three years ago, she could delineate her and Scott’s relationship into “before Pyeongchang” and “after Pyeongchang.” The former was repressed, safe, kept in stasis at all costs, in the pursuit of something bigger than themselves. The latter was what she can only summarise as deeply confused—if their haphazard switch between being joined at the hip during tour, and then never seeing each other the remaining nine months of the year can count as "confused," and not an all-or-nothing co-dependency.

This time, there's no distinction, which is how she comes to realise that they must be doing something right.

If she tried to draw the line between singular "Tessa" and "Scott," and "Tessa and Scott," she would find herself hopelessly lost in a gradient of changes by millimeters.

Sure, they fucked each other in a hotel room on the night of the Grand Prix Final, so one might consider that a significant turning point in their relationship. But beyond sharing a bed on occasion (and testing out the many benefits of a walk-in shower), there's nothing much different now. Scott still brings her coffee in the morning with that same fond smile, catching her hand to run his fingers across the inside of her wrist. She still dumps her feet in his lap every evening in the office, for him to massage while they pore over videos from the day. There's still a hesitation, slight, bearing through whenever they're away from the privacy of his home or hers. 

But it's less fraught with worry, with the pressure to be  _something_.

They can be content with what they are.   
  


* * *

  
A week on from the Grand Prix Final, with less than three months to go until the Olympics, Gadbois enters full-blown panic mode.

It's a controlled kind of panic, of course—Patrice's military scheduling would demand no less—but panic nonetheless. Gone are the luxuries of two or three-team sessions at the rink. The rigors of pre-Olympic training mandate that every last scrap of time on the ice is precious, the gym packed from open to close, dance studios block-booked for fine tuning of choreography. The small set of stands in the main rink is busier than Tessa ever remembers seeing it, always full of officials from one country or another, monitoring progress.

It's impossible not to be caught up in the nervous buzz of excitement, the tension of knowing that you're running against a ticking clock. Everybody at the rink feels it: all pushing harder, digging deeper, striving for that extra hundredth of a percent that will give an edge over the competition. 

Natalie and Gabriel are no exception. The weight of an entire nation's Olympic dreams is not an easy cross to bear. Add to that the pressure that she and Scott have put on them, the irresistible lure of former Olympic champions coaching the new hopefuls, and it's a wonder they can even stand upright, let alone place one foot in front of the other and string a program together. Tessa notices the changes: the flashes of frustration that flare when Natalie screws up an easy turn; the prolonged silences after they get off the ice, Gabriel staring into space as he unlaces his boots; the bitten lips and the fingernails clenched into palms of hands. 

But it's not until their last training session on the Friday after their defeat at the Final that Tessa realises  _quite_ how bad it's become. 

As per usual, the rink is heaving.

After Monday morning, when the seating area behind the boards became so congested that one of the juniors nearly knocked out a tooth tripping over someone's rucksack, Marie-France ruled that the only people allowed at rink level were skaters and coaches, everyone else relegated to the stands like overbearing parents. Tessa sits by the boards, with Scott settled back into the chair next to her, his arms folded over his chest as he watches the practice. 

Clair de Lune echoes over the rink's sound system. Tessa barely needs to pay attention to the music; she's heard it so many times that the knowledge of the corresponding movements is engrained in her. She watches Natalie and Gabriel push up into a lift—but it's all wrong, too slow. Natalie hits the climactic position far too late for the beat in the music. 

Tessa frowns, leaning forwards in her chair.

"They're off today," she murmurs. "That's the third time they've missed their cue."

Scott nods, his brow furrowing. "Strange."

The rest of their free dance continues in the same vein: technically sound, but mechanical and emotionless, disjointed from the music as much as from each other. In all the time that Tessa has spent with Natalie and Gabriel, she's never seen them look uneasy in hold. Today, they may as well be kids shoved together at a local beginners' class. They reach for each other, grasping, their hips bumping together, bodies at awkward angles. Where the music encourages them to be fluid and smooth, they are stiff, locked in place, twisted spines of two opposing branches.

As the final beats of the music sound out across the rink, the pair come to rest in their closing position, breathing hard. They linger there for a moment, holding the pose the way they've been trained; then, simultaneously, they push away from one another. 

"...don't know why you're being like this," Natalie snaps, a scowl on her freckled face. "What more am I supposed to do? I'm trying my best, you know."

Gabriel shoves his hands into the pockets of his tracksuit pants, his cheeks blotchy with exertion. The ends of his short blonde hair flop forwards across his face; he shakes them out with a brief jerk of his head. "Leave it alone, Nat," he says. "It doesn't concern you."

There's a scraping noise as Natalie halts in her retreat to the boards, her skates digging into the ice. 

"Excuse me?" she says.

Scott gets to his feet. "I don't know what this is about, you two, but let's get off the ice first, and then we can straighten things out."

Natalie pays him no attention.

"It doesn't  _concern_ me?" she repeats, her words pitching upwards, loud enough that the other couples in the rink glance in her direction. "I have absolutely no idea  _how_ you came to that conclusion, but I'd love to hear it. Are you planning on competing alone now? Did I miss when ice dance became a singles sport?" Her voice gathers volume, the syllables rattling out one after the other. "Care to explain exactly why it's not of my concern that you're apparently unable to even  _look_ at me, Gabriel? Or, wait, is that just how it goes with everyone? Is that what happened to all your other partners—you got sick and tired of looking at them? Couldn't stand the sight of their faces any more, so you move onto a new one?"

" _Natalie_ ," Tessa raps out the name like a command. 

Everyone turns to look at her—not just Natalie, but Scott; Patrice, standing at the opposite end of the boards with a few teams clustered around him; the next skaters up for practice, hovering awkwardly at centre ice as they wait for their music to start; Gabriel, his face drained of blood, ashen. 

"Come here. Now. Both of you."

Without comment, the two shuffle off the ice and over to the area behind the boards, where they stand with a foot of space between them. Tessa looks them over with a stern eye. Natalie folds her hands in front of her, head lowered, but her jaw is set and there's a defiant gleam in her downcast eyes. Gabriel simply looks empty—like Tessa could brush him from existence with a wave of her hand. 

"I'd rather not treat you like children," Tessa says, quieter now that they're out of the way of the ongoing practice session. "So, is anyone going to tell me what this is about?"

Natalie’s gaze flickers over to Gabriel, then back to the floor. Neither of them makes a sound.

“Nat, kiddo,” Scott says, stepping forwards. “We’re not going to get mad at you. We just want to get to the bottom of this. It’s pretty obvious that something’s up with you two. Part of our job is to help you fix it.”

Tessa recognises the look in Natalie's eyes: the stony, unflinching expression, like the rink could burn down around them and it wouldn't faze her one bit. They'll be getting no response from this line of questioning. Exchanging a quick glance with Scott, Tessa jerks her head to the side. He nods. 

"Right, Gabriel," she says, breezily, gathering her bag from the floor. "We're going for a walk."  
  


* * *

  
The park outside Gadbois is typically beautiful whatever the weather.

Overlooking the near-permanent roadworks blocking the street that runs along the perimeter, and the small cluster of picnic tables which look as though they haven't been given a fresh coat of paint since Tessa was born, there's fresh air, open skies, and a brief reprieve from the filtered, sharp smell of the rink. 

At least, there is usually.

Today, there is snow. It lies so thick across the ground that Tessa has to rely on memory alone to keep her from tripping over the ankle-high railings at the side of the path—the kind of snow that turns the sky grey and featureless, and makes everyone outside wish that they had more common sense.

Not one to be deterred by a little bad weather, Tessa pushes on. Trailed by a reluctant Gabriel, she climbs up a narrow set of ice-crusted steps, and leads the way into the old shelter that sits at the crest of the hill.

It’s a bare-bones structure, set a few metres back from an overlook point where the view of the city unfolds across the horizon. Three walls of solid, grey stone are supported at each corner with a roughshod granite column, the front of the shelter open to the elements. A single bench is carved into the back wall. Trails of snow have been tracked in across the large paving slabs underfoot, bearing the imprints of a handful of scattered footprints.

Wrapped in their thick winter coats, Tessa and Gabriel tuck themselves out of the way, taking up seats next to each other on the bench. It’s warm enough to be tolerable; at the very least, it's out of the driving snow.

"Scott has a truck, right?" Gabriel says, watching the wind whip past the hilltop. "He can come pick us up from the back, if Natalie hasn't eaten him already."

"I trust that Scott can look after himself. He's a grown man."

"I don't know. You haven't seen Nat when she's  _really_ pissed off."

Tilting her head to look across to him, Tessa raises a delicate eyebrow. "And why exactly would she be  _really_ pissed off, Gabriel?"

"You heard her," he shrugs, with a nonchalance that's too exaggerated to be convincing. "She thinks I won't look at her."

"Is she right?"

"No!" he says, hurt colouring his voice. In his lap, his gloved hands twist together. "Well, yes. Sort of. But not in the way that she thinks."

His eyes flicker up to hers, then away, seeking refuge in the blank space of the whirling snow. Tessa turns away too, giving him space.

Over the past year and half, she has come to understand that it's not so much about what Gabriel says as what he leaves unsaid. It's the things that prickle under the surface: the worries he can't put words to, the fears that leave him tongue-tied. There's nothing as terrifying as the unutterable. So she gives him time, gives him the opportunity to piece the fragments together. And he, in turn, comes to trust her with the burden of those thoughts given voice. 

It's something tangible she can do for him: something she's well qualified for, with the knowledge of what it's like to struggle alone inside your own head. 

"Nat's got it all wrong," Gabriel sighs, his body sagging like a quiet breath. "She thinks that all of this is her fault, that it's because I'm bored and want a new partner, or because she's not good enough for me. But it's not like that. It's nothing to do with Nat, or who she is, or how she skates. It's really not her fault, and I _tried_ telling her that, but she keeps insisting that it must be. She wants to take the blame, I guess, or I'm not explaining it right. Every time I try to, she gets angry, or I can't find the words, and saying it wrong would be worse than not saying it at all..."

"Try explaining it to me," Tessa volunteers. 

Gabriel eyes her doubtfully. His pale face is red with cold, sharp features bitten pink by the driving wind. Tessa wonders if he realises that it makes him look far younger than his twenty-three years. 

"It's good practice," she says. "I'm not going to blow up on you if something comes out in the wrong way."

"I don't know," he replies, with the barest hint of dry humour. "I've seen what happens what Scott messes up your coffee order."

Tessa smiles. "Like I said. I'm not going to blow up on  _you_."

His lips quirk up into a returning smile, but he still hesitates; the smile fades into a strange sort of look, pulled in a hundred different directions all at once. Pushing up from his seat, he walks over to the opposite side of the shelter and stares out into the snow. 

On a good day, it’s possible to see the whole city from their perch. On a day like today, there’s nothing but a featureless expanse of snow and blinking skyscrapers, rooftops flashing like lighthouses amid a shifting, grey sea. Outlined against the bleak horizon, his arms wrapped around himself, Gabriel cuts as solitary a figure as Tessa has ever seen.

"Alright," he says, turning to face her. "You know that Nat has a girlfriend, right—Shelley, the red-haired girl? The one who's always in the stands at competition."

Tessa nods. "I've talked to her a few times. She's lovely."

"Yeah, yeah, she is. She's great. And I want Nat to be happy, of course I do. She deserves to have that kind of love in her life. No one works harder than Nat does. I mean, she's amazing. You know she moved to Montreal just to be my partner? She left her whole family behind, her mum and dad, her little sister, her friends and her school. And she never _once_ complained, never put any pressure on me, even though she bet her entire life on our partnership working out. It's just..."

He trails off, looking lost in thought, his hands slipping into the pockets of his puffer jacket. Tessa sees the material stretch and warp where his palms fist against it, and wonders, not for the first time, how somebody like Gabriel found his way into the burning spotlight of Olympic competition—if it was anything like her, chasing the high of the win and the security of a hand to hold. 

"Everyone expects us to look like we're in love," he says suddenly, so quiet that she barely hears him above the wind. He looks down, scuffing the paving stones with the heel of his boot. "That's what you have to do to win, right? Make people believe in you. Make them want to root for you. I've been thinking that maybe that's what let us down in the Final. Maybe we'd have come first if I'd just looked at Natalie differently, or held her hand for a bit longer after we got off the ice."

And then he sighs, his shoulders hunching over. "I want to win so  _badly_. I want that gold for Nat, for the both of us. But I can't lie to people to do it."

Tessa's brow furrows. 

Her reflexive response is to ask him where he got this idea into his head. Instinctively, she wants to defend herself and Scott, protest that they've never encouraged Natalie and Gabriel to be anything but themselves. But, she considers, if she and Scott and Marie-France and Patrice are the only teams that Gabriel has to model himself after, isn't it natural that he should come to this conclusion? She can lay all the evidence out there herself: her own career, rooted in the draw of their relationship; decades of shared history, one half of the same unfinished book; the very fact of the last year together.   

When she replies, she's careful to measure her tone, keep her expression neutral. 

"You don't have to lie," she tells him. "You don't have to be anything but yourself."

Gabriel doesn't say anything; he leans against the corner of stone behind him, looking at his hands. 

"I mean it, Gabriel. Anyone who's in this sport for the right reasons would tell you the same thing. People respond to integrity. If you put yourself out there—your honest self—they'll see that. Both the audience and the judges."

"It's different for you and Scott, though," he says, reluctantly, shifting his weight from one foot to the next. "I don't want to be rude, but..."

"It's okay. You can say what's on your mind."

"I mean, you and Scott  _did_ really love each other, didn't you? You didn't have to lie about it."

Tessa hesitates. The answer is there, sure as anything, but the particulars always seem to get lost in translation. Love, as she and Scott came to define it, strayed far from the conventional parameters. 

She shifts on the bench, curling her hands over the lip of the cold stone. "Listen," she says. "Scott and I... it's not quite as simple as that. We spent a long time trying to be something that we weren't. In the end, it made both of us unhappy. I suppose if there's anything I've taken away from those years, it's that there's no point in pretending to be anything but yourself. It's not worth the time or the effort. It's not even worth a gold medal. There are things that matter more than winning."

Gabriel's eyes aren't downcast any more; he looks straight at her, piercing blue. 

"That's why you came back to Montreal, isn't it?" he says. "To stop pretending."

"Yes."

"And do you love him still?"

"Of course," she says, without even thinking—but the truth of it settles quietly in her, filling up the empty spaces. "Always."

It's never mattered how.

She's loved him so much that she felt like it might burst from inside her, like the force of her love could leap from every single word and look and touch, until it seemed unfathomable that people could look at the two of them and _not_ see it. When it was small and crumpled and crushed, she loved him then, too. Even when it hurt more than she could have ever imagined, so much that she had to bury it under layers of time and distance, soil over a coffin. She's loved him enough to persist in the times that there was no fathoming a future for them; enough to carry her love blazing on her shoulders, shout it from the rooftops; and in the end, she'll love him enough to do it all over again. 

"I know it's none of my business, but I think you should tell him," Gabriel says, quietly, as the snow drifts past the opening behind him. 

Tessa shakes her head. "He knows."

"Does he? You didn't see him back when he first started coaching me and Nat."

She glances up at him with a frown. "What do you mean?"

Gabriel shrugs, kicking his feet out in front of him, sending a spray of snow and pebbles scattering across the paving stones. "That's probably a conversation you should have with Scott, not me."

Dimly, Tessa is aware that it's ridiculous to be taking relationship advice from her twenty-three year old student. But this particular student looks back at her with such unaffected clarity that she can't help but wish he was around all those years ago when she and Scott were searching for a couples counsellor. Aged up twenty years, maybe, so she wouldn't have to feel like she was taking therapy from a precocious child genius.

"Okay," she says, getting to her feet. "Let me make a suggestion. You agree to tell Natalie what you just told me, and I'll agree to tell Scott what I just told you."

"Word for word?"

"Minimum artistic licence."

He pauses for a moment, considering. 

"If it helps, Scott or I can be there to mediate between the two of you," she adds. 

"No, no, it's okay," he says, quickly, wrinkling up his nose. "No offense, but I think that would make it even weirder. It's better if it's just me and Nat."

Tessa raises an eyebrow, holding out a hand. "Can I take that as a deal, then? We'll agree to confront our personal issues with maturity and respect, as much as we might want to avoid them. And we can hurry up and get back indoors before my fingers fall off entirely.”

With a brief snort of laughter, Gabriel's face curves into a smile. He reaches across the shelter to take her outstretched hand, his gloved fingers gripping hers with surprising strength.

"Deal."  
  


* * *

  
By the time they arrive back at the rink, it’s late enough that the last practice sessions have finished. The ice is empty, boards cleared of kit and coffee cups alike, the coaches’ seating area as pristine as can be considering the number of hot drinks Scott has spilled across the rubber matting. Only the hum of the air conditioning unit greets them, the place deserted. So much for a rescue team in the event they became stranded in the snow.

Tessa accompanies Gabriel to the locker rooms, where they head their separate ways: he to his car; she to remain in the rink, as per usual. As his footsteps disappear down the hallway, silence sets in.

She glances down at her phone: no messages from Scott. His car was still in the parking lot when they arrived back at the rink, so he must be lurking somewhere around the building, probably finishing up business of his own while he waits for her to get back. They make a habit of leaving at the same time, often to the same place. And really, given the amount of time they spend together now, there's no real reason for them to still drive separate cars to the rink. People almost seemed  _more_ surprised when she turned up in her own car on the first day back after the Grand Prix Final, rather than in the passenger seat of Scott's. 

In a place like Gadbois, keeping something as big as their relationship under wraps is impossible. News travels fast within the walls of the rink; gossip travels even faster. Tessa suspects that Scott's run-in with Patrice on the way down to the bar may have something to do with the volume of curious glances they attract nowadays. It used to bother her, the act of being stared at like she's an exhibit at the zoo—and sometimes it still does, just a little, an irritation that she can't shake. But it's better than it was. 

They're not trying to hide anything. People can look, and they can see what they want to see. She's not concerned about the outside perspective any more; what matters is the two of them, how she feels, and how Scott feels, and how they navigate this new thing between them.

Nobody else belongs in their relationship.  
  


* * *

  
It's been a long time since Tessa has had the luxury of private ice. 

At first, she thinks that must be why there's a strange sensation that comes over her when she slips off her skate guards and steps onto the ice. It must be unfamiliarity, or unease: the solitude of a cavernous, empty rink, the overhead lights creaking above her. The glide of her blades on the pockmarked surface is not as smooth as she would like, and if she skates too close to the edge, where the ice has been worn slippery, she gets the feeling that one wrong turn could send her tumbling head over heels.

But it's not just that. There's a sense of wrongness, deep in her gut. 

She pushes through it as best she can, drowns the sensation in a whirl of colour and movement, the breeze pulling strands of hair from her ponytail. Still, the feeling persists, until she's squinting through gritted teeth and furrowed brow, twisting into a step sequence that should be smooth and effortless, but the turns scrape against the ice, sending up sprays of snow that melt against her leggings, the cold seeping through.

"Hey, there she is! Thought I might find you here."

Tessa slides to a halt, the edges of her skates digging into the ice. In her focus she hadn't noticed Scott approach; he stands at the boards with a kit bag slung over his shoulder, a relaxed smile on his face. He's still alive, at least. That bodes well for his half of the team discussion.

"I wondered when Natalie would finally let you go," she calls, skating up to join him. When she folds her arms over the top of the divider, he gives her hand a quick squeeze of greeting. "Did you manage to sort things out with her?" 

Scott nods. “She’ll be okay. Worried about Gabe, mostly. I think Olympic fever is getting to her. She mentioning winning gold about seventeen times in the space of an hour.”

"Hm. We should keep an eye on that."

“Come on, you know how it gets around the Olympics," he says, with a teasing smile. "If they’re not dreaming about that podium every single night, they don’t want it enough. I’m more worried about why Nat exploded like that. It seemed to come out of nowhere.”

Tessa shakes her head. “Gabriel doesn’t think so.”

“Yeah? What did he have to say about it? You were out there for so long I thought you’d both come back with frostbite.”

“Spending forty-five minutes in the middle of a blizzard will do that to you.”

“Come on now, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of snow. Zero visibility and grey sludge. Lovely.”

Sighing, Tessa rests her head atop her arms. “I’ll let you take the outdoors chat next time, then. I think my fingertips are still recovering feeling.”

Without further ado, Scott clamps his palms around her hand and begins rubbing her numb fingers between his.

“Mm. Thanks,” she mumbles. “The least you could do, really.”

“That’s me. A bare minimum kinda guy.”

She smiles at him, then falls quiet, letting him coax warmth back into her hand.

“You know, Natalie told me something, months ago,” she says, soft, head tilted so she can press her cheek against her arms. “Back at Autumn Classic, when you were hacking your guts up in bed. She said that Gabriel had stopped looking at her, and she couldn’t understand why. I kept an eye on them for the whole week after that, but it seemed to be fine. She never brought it up again. Except this afternoon, when I was talking to Gabriel, he said the exact same thing. He said that he couldn’t look at her.”

Scott’s brow furrows. “Why not?”

“Because he couldn’t look at her like they were in love, and not feel like he was lying. He has it in his head that that’s what he needs to do to win gold.”

For a moment, Scott is completely silent; the only sound is the gentle brush of his hands against hers, still rolling her fingers between his.

“Huh,” he says, finally. She wonders if he’s thinking about the same thing as she is—if the memory of Sochi still burns, dying embers, in the back of his brain. “What did you tell him?”

“That there are things worth more than winning. That there’s no point pretending to be something for other people just to make them happy.”

“A year ago, you would have called that kindness.”

“Maybe,” Tessa agrees, lifting her head from her arms. “But a lot can change in a year.”

Scott raises his eyebrows, smiling, but she can see the gravity in his eyes when he meets hers. “Yeah? How’s the world looking now? Full of life and love and the miracle of creation?”

She pushes away from the boards, drifting out to the centre of the ice. Her hands float at her sides, half-reaching, and there’s a smile on her face, curling at the corners of her lips, half-asking.

“Come skate with me and maybe I’ll tell you.”  
  


* * *

  
It’s near-impossible to define what Scott is to Tessa.

When she tries, she finds herself listing endlessly, finding one thing and then another, a new way in which he’s impacted the person she is now, the person she chooses to be.

He’s infuriating at times; frustrating, in a variety of ways; the keenest critic of her comedy routines; the best supporter she’s ever known; generous with his time and his emotions; vulnerable in a way that few ever see; a friend and a lover and a confidant and a home, all rolled up into one.

But, first and foremost, he was— _is_ —her partner.

There’s no part of her that doesn’t remember the way his blades glide across the ice, the bend and curve of his body moving with hers. Even if all she had was sound, she would know him by the smooth rasp of his edges.

They skate in silence, side by side.

She doesn’t reach for his hand, and he doesn’t reach for hers. But she falls in time with the bend of his knee, the easy rise and fall of it, matches the length of his strokes until there’s no way of distinguishing the sound of her blades from the sound of his. They don’t need words; not when they have this language that knows no verbalisation.

On the ice, they are perfect shadows. When she turns, Scott turns. When she leans into her edges, picking up speed, so does Scott.

There’s a harmony, uncomplicated, in the way they mirror each other: comfortable, familiar, and Tessa finds that sense of wrongness quieting into something deep and long-forgotten, a shape that she barely remembers, but she feels it in her bones anyway, settling against her skin as they continue their laps.

A sense of peace.  

In the grand scheme of things, it passes in the blink of an eye: in the time it takes to look over to Scott, and see him looking back at her, his brown eyes melted gold and soft—like simply skating next to her, at her side like this, is the proudest moment of his entire life.

She doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t say anything.

But they know what passes between them as she holds his gaze, revelling in the weight of it: the feeling of being able to look at him, unafraid of what she might see in his eyes.

When she takes his hand, his fingers fit neatly against hers, interlacing, as though sliding back into the worn grooves of an old statue—as though they were always supposed to be there from the very beginning. 

“Together,” she says, and he smiles, echoes her: “Together.”

There are many different ways to love someone, and even more ways to say it.

Perhaps later, it will be something else. For now, it is this: Scott’s thumb soft underneath hers, and their perfectly wordless unison, and the laps, and laps, and laps they skate.

 


	16. Chapter 16

Rapid advance up the international ice dancing ladder aside, she and Scott have never done anything quickly.

When they first met, it took five months for them to start talking to each other instead of blushing every time they held hands. The other little girls and boys at the rink in Ilderton went bowling together, attended each other's birthday parties, had sleepovers and after-school playdates. Tessa celebrated her partner's birthday with a neatly wrapped present that her brother helped her pick out and the brief worry that maybe by the time it came around to her birthday, she would be too tall to skate with Scott any more. 

She couldn't tell anybody what Scott's favourite breakfast cereal was. She didn't know what he wanted to name his kids when he grew up, or how he got that little scar between his right thumb and forefinger, the one she ran her finger across sometimes, or what he wanted to do with his life besides winning the Stanley Cup. But she knew what his hand felt like in hers, and the way he would smile when he made her laugh. 

Year after year, when their parents would sit them down in the car outside the rink and ask whether they wanted to continue for another season, she could tell them that she knew Scott's answer just as well as she knew her own.

His hand belonged in hers.  
  


* * *

  
Late nights at the rink become even later once Tessa discovers that skating with Scott is an option again. 

Amidst the turmoil of Olympic preparation, their private sessions at the end of the day are a saving grace: a pause for breath, a chance to reconnect and refocus before the next day comes crashing in upon them. Mornings before coaching are spent gathering strength in the rink office, Scott sprawled out across the leather sofa, Tessa curled up on the armchair next to him, too tired to speak but sharing a cup of coffee. Nights are an attempt to catch eight hours of sleep. The fragile half-hour after the rink clears, when Tessa doesn't have to run after Patrice for pointers, and Scott doesn't have to dash home in time for his grocery shopping: that's their chance to skate. 

At first, they skate in silence. They take their time at the boards beforehand, discussing the day as they lace up their boots next to each other, the white and black leather freshly polished, gleaming. But as soon as they step onto the ice, Scott's hand fastens around hers, and there's nothing but quiet. 

About two weeks into their new schedule, Scott doesn't take her hand. 

He hesitates at the entrance to the ice with an apprehensive look on his face—one that Tessa suspects isn't just because she made him smarten up for their session today. (All it took was the suggestion that if he intended to show up in tracksuit bottoms and a ratty old pullover for the sixth time in a row, he might find himself a new partner to skate with while he was at it.)

"Hey, Tess, I was thinking..." he says, leaning against the boards. "Do you wanna try something different today? Don't get me wrong, I'm totally down for skating crossovers until I can't feel my legs anymore. Love it. But we could push the boat out a bit, be adventurous. If you want."

Tessa raises her eyebrows. “I’m listening.”

“Perfect! Okay, okay, give me one sec… here we go…”

Folding her arms across her chest, she watches as Scott roots around in his jacket pocket, pulling out his phone and tapping something on the screen, before placing it back. Music begins to emanate from his pocket. The sound is tinny and garbled, like it's being played down a cup on a string, but she recognises the song immediately: the soft, lilting piano; the tremulous violin layered over the top. 

He's playing to his audience of one.

"Scott, I don't remember  _any_ of this," she says, with a helpless shrug. "I don't even remember 2018, let alone 2007."

Grinning, he hops onto the ice and takes her hand. "Me either. It'll be perfect. We'll just pretend you still have that lavender dress with the bow on the back...”

Tessa is momentarily taken aback that he both knows the difference between "purple" and "lavender," and that he remembers her costumes from almost twenty years ago, but she recovers quickly.

"Okay, and you’ve got your white shirt with the sleeves that kept getting caught on my skates—"

“There you go!” he crows, jubilant. “It all comes flooding back. Okay, okay, how did we start? Quick, before it skips too far ahead. I was on one knee, I think.” He gets down on his knees, still holding her hand. “And then—oh wait, yeah! You were supposed to be asleep in the beginning of the program, so you were kinda draped backwards over my arm.”

She eyes him with a look of blatant apprehension.

“Come on, Tess, have I ever dropped you? Ever? Can we at least start the program before the whole song finishes?”

“Fine,” she says, and tugs her jumper into place, before she lowers herself down against his arm. 

In case she had any doubts about  _exactly_ how long it's been since she's done this sort of thing, the tight pull along her spine as she bends backwards is a helpful reminder. Staring up at the roof of the rink, beyond the tuft of Scott's hair as he leans over her, she can't help but feel faintly ridiculous. 

At least there's nobody around to witness this. 

"See, that wasn't so bad!" Scott says. "How does it feel? Okay?"

If she was being honest, she'd tell him that his elbow is currently digging into her spine in a way that feels like she's pinched a nerve. But he seems like he's having a moment, and she doesn't want to ruin it.

"You better be able to get me up again."

"You don't like it?"

"It's a little uncomfortable," she admits, shifting her weight a fraction to the left. His elbow is still there, pressing into the arch of her back. "Maybe it was always this uncomfortable and I just forgot."

Scott's brows knit into a frown, his face hovering above hers.

"It's not supposed to be uncomfortable. Hold up, let me see if I can—"

"No, it's fine, I think I've got it—"

And, for a brief, blessed moment, she  _has_ got it. She angles her hips down, tightening her core muscles enough that her spine lifts, the pinching sensation dissipating. It's comfortable and secure, and she begins to consider what else they might be able to try—until Scott moves his arm.

Tessa knows exactly what happens next.

There’s the lean of her weight pulling too far to one side, Scott’s body lurching backwards to counterweight hers. The scrape of metal against ice rings across the arena as their blades skitter out from underneath them, followed by a dull, solid thud. And, just like always, there’s the dazed half-second after she hits the ice, in which she wonders whether their five Olympic medals _really_ happened.

Slowly, she sits up.

The world doesn’t spin around her, which is always a good start. Nothing feels broken or sprained. There are no sharp flashes of pain, only a dull ache where her ass hit the ice, and grazed, prickling palms from putting her hands out to soften her fall. Scott’s body is wedged halfway underneath hers to take the brunt of the impact; she readies an apologetic smile, preparing to tell him that his spotless record remains intact.

“Probably best if we leave this out of the third re-issue of our biography, huh?” she says, with a slightly breathless laugh.

But, when she looks down, he’s lying flat on his back. His eyes are closed.

"Scott?" she says. "Are you okay?"

There's no response.

"Hey," she says, a little louder, and tries not to knee him in any vulnerable parts as she extracts herself to kneel at his side.

He’s perfectly still, not even the twitch of an eyelid when she leans over him. A cold strike of fear runs through her. What’s the proper response to an on-ice injury of unknown nature? She tries to summon up the knowledge from the seminars she and Scott were made to attend as kids, the ones where she would take pages upon pages of notes, and he would play Snake under the table.

It’s probably nothing; he’s probably fine. But just in case, what would she have written on page five, beside her doodles in the margins? Her hands twist in her lap, fingers knotting together. Does she touch him? Is that allowed? She reaches a hand towards him, torn, then pulls it back, before settling for tapping his shoulder as gently as she can manage.

“Scott?” she says, panic creeping into her voice.

Oh, fuck. Oh, Jesus. He looks pale. His skin looks grey and wan, even under the fluorescent lights of the rink. Should she call an ambulance? She left her phone in her bag over by the boards, but his phone is in his jacket pocket, the Valse Triste still playing—she swears if he dies while one of her favourite songs of all time is playing, she’ll _never_ forgive him. With shaking hands, she scrambles for the zipper of his pocket and takes his phone out.

Okay, okay, shit. What does she say? She'll need to give the emergency services the rink address, explain that there's been an accident, that her partner is unconscious and she can't wake him. He's still breathing, but God, what if it's serious—what if it's permanent damage, not something they can fix with surgery or physio, how can she even get the words out to the emergency operator if—

"Hah!" Scott cries, sitting up bolt upright, his eyes flying open.

The phone drops through Tessa's grip. There's a crunching sound as it hits the ice, then a quiet tinkling of glass. The Valse Triste cuts out mid-bar.

In the silence, Scott stares at her, his eyes wide—as wide as her own, she suspects, staring back at him, her heart pounding in her chest. He glances down at his phone next to them, a puddle of shattered glass fanned out from the point of impact.

"Tessa, what the fuck?"

"What the fuck,  _me_?" she repeats to him, open-mouthed. "What the fuck,  _Scott?"_

"That's my phone!"

"I thought you were never going to walk again!"

"I was joking! We fell less than a foot, Tess."

Adrenaline still coursing through her veins, the panic from a few seconds earlier melts into righteous fury, white-hot. She can’t even bring herself to be glad that he’s not hurt. She’s _livid_ , her fingernails clenching into her palms as she gets to her feet, angry with him in a way that she can’t remember being for a very long time.

By the look in his eyes—the sudden snuffing out of his usual look of amusement—he’s realised it too.

“I cannot fucking _believe_ you! I was about to call an ambulance! I thought you’d broken your back because you’re a self-sacrificing _idiot_ who would rather cripple himself than let me get a single bruise. Do you know how many ways I pictured you dying just now? Right here on the ice with me, or in the ambulance, or maybe in the hospital, while the doctors tried to save your life? I thought about having to tell Alma, and how we’d never get to the Olympics with Natalie and Gabriel, and besides the fact that you’d died, besides the fact that I would have lost my _partner_ , you’d have completely  _ruined_ the Valse Triste for me. And now you’re telling me this was all part of your grand plan to, what, send me to an early grave? Put a few more grey hairs on my head?”

“Surprise?” he says, small and shrinking.

“You’re an _asshole_.”  
  


* * *

  
The problem with Scott’s general willingness to help out with whatever she needs around the rink is that it leaves him with very few ways to earn his way back into her good books.

He cooks her dinner every night for a week, each meal more elaborate than the next. He lets her choose the music for their breakfasts in the rink office, with not even a flicker of a grimace when she puts on Hall and Oates for the fourth morning in a row. But it’s the flowers that appear on her doorstep one morning—a delicate bouquet arranged in a wicker basket, no note attached—that are his crowning achievement.

Growing up, Tessa was the kind of child who spent her lunch break at the rink curled up in an empty practice room with her nose in a book. Any kind of book would do: fiction, non-fiction, biographical, historical. But the books with the pretty pictures were the nicest, and her grandmother’s handbook of pressed flowers, with the crinkled leather binding and the pages as thin as tissue, was the best of all. She would spend hours thumbing delicately between the pages, the wrinkled flower petals so fragile under her fingertips, like the wings of a butterfly. Beside each flower was written a name in Latin, a common name, and the meaning of the bloom, in her grandmother's neat cursive.

Tessa memorised them all, one by one. When she got nervous before competition, Scott would make her repeat them to him: like a little mantra, visualising each one in her head, turning the pages to uncover the next.

It’s easy to turn to those vivid pre-competition memories to read the flowers that appear on her doorstep.

Dusky pink roses, a colour that conjures up memories of the summer sunset from her cabin by the lake, representing admiration, gratitude, joy. Dahlias, lavender fading to a rippled cream: commitment, a lasting bond. Singular white tulips, scattered through the bouquet—a classic, representing a request for forgiveness. And, in the very centre, a cluster of pink peonies, ruffled petals fanned out against dark green stems.

Scott knows what he’s doing—or, if he doesn’t, he’s doing a damn good job of pretending like he does.

So maybe it’s the flowers, and maybe she’s getting sentimental in her old age. Maybe she’s forgotten how to hold a grudge, or maybe she doesn’t want to. Maybe, when it comes down to it, she can no more deny him time in the rink together than she can deny herself. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t take long for them to find their way back to centre ice, hand in hand.

This time, they don’t try lifts, or use old music dug up from years gone by.

They move into hold, and Tessa doesn't think; she only feels. Scott’s hand slots at her hip, hers at his shoulder, and she anticipates the turn of his hips by the pull of the muscles under her fingers. It seems superfluous to have her eyes open still. There's no music. All she needs is his body under her palms, the quiet rasp of their edges across clean ice. 

She imagines them like spools of red thread, fate given form. They dip in and out of hold, separating for an instant; but always, it's her hand trailing along the back of his shoulder, or his palm at her waist when she spins out of his grip, the connection never breaking. They would cease to exist rather than be apart, she thinks. One movement leads seamlessly into the next: melting into one another, out, together again, his forehead pressed to hers, the warmth of his breath on her mouth. 

She's never had to ask for this. She moves close and his body opens for her, his hands settling at her hips, palms splayed. She slips away, the thread unspooling, and he lets her flow through his grip, sets the path and intention and trusts that she'll find her way back to him. In a singular moment, they are separate and whole. 

The momentum of her glide carries her into his arms again.

There's no audience, no shining lights or gold medals or podiums, no proud parents; but it's the kind of movement that she spends her life dreaming of. Music sings in her veins, his gaze fixed on hers, his breathing ragged and his cheeks flushed. He's beautiful. He's  _hers_ , in the way that he's always been, in the way that falls from him with every second and thought and touch, with nothing more than how he moves for her. 

She doesn't think. She only feels. 

As they skitter to a halt in the centre of the ice, she kisses him, and he kisses her back.

Even if they didn't have this, even if they weren't drawn back to one another, time and time again, she would make it so. She would weave their red thread of fate into existence herself.  
  


* * *

  
The Monument-National in downtown Montreal is the kind of place that was built to last, the kind of building that was as aware of its own grandeur in its very first days of construction as it is now, two hundred years later. It’s somewhere that Tessa would have dreamed of appearing in as a six-year old girl: magnificent grey arches set atop columns of stone, spotlights stretching up to the clouded sky, every window and archway lit up with colour for opening night. Tonight, the posters across the front of the building display the lithe forms of the two newest principals of the National Ballet of Canada, the leading artists to a touring production of Manon.

It’s not a date, Scott had assured her. It doesn’t have to be a date.

Only make sure your Friday night is free, put on something smart, be ready for collection at seven p.m. Marie-France and Patrice will come too; won't it be nice to spend time together outside of the rink? 

We’ll get drinks before the show starts. I’ll sit with my arm slung around your shoulders, brush your hair back behind your ear when you laugh so hard that a few strands unravel from your braid.

Not a date.

A night out between friends. Close friends, even. Friends who kiss. Friends who take each other to see tragically romantic ballets where doomed prostitutes die for their love for a common man (there's something a little familiar about that story).

Not a date, not a date, not a date. 

"Nice dress," Scott says, low and quiet at her ear, his fingers curling at the small of her back as he guides her through the crowd filtering into the auditorium. The press of his hand is tight, his smile sharp. Her dress is like liquid against her skin, emerald satin, deep and rich against the gilt gold décor of the lobby. Marie-France and Patrice are nowhere to be seen, even though Tessa’s certain she saw them lurking in a corner only a few minutes ago.

She wouldn’t mind if it _was_ a date. They’re trying to take things slow, trying not to scare each other off, but the fact remains that in the course of pursuing this undefined thing between them, they’ve had sex a number of times, made out like teenagers on the sofa in the rink office, and, apparently, are going to the ballet with their former coaches, who have been married for so long that Tessa forgets they ever lived separate existences.

Perhaps it’s a date after all.  
  


* * *

  
Some time before the end of the first act, Tessa becomes aware that Scott’s hand on her knee is doing far more for her than it should. By the end of the second, she’s started brainstorming ways the two of them can subtly take their leave before the interval is over and they're locked into the third act. It’s no reflection on the quality of the night’s entertainment; the show is  _beautiful_. The staging is exquisite, the performances magnetic, and the ballerina playing Manon gives a heart-wrenching turn as a woman torn between the love of the right person, and the longing for a life of luxury and comfort.

If she and Scott were sitting anywhere else, Tessa would be enthralled. 

But they're in a box off to the side of the auditorium, Marie-France and Patrice sitting a small distance apart from them, heads turned towards the stage, and she's blocking nobody's view when she shuffles her chair closer to Scott's. Tucked away behind the curtain that separates their box from the rest of the theatre, she can tip her head against his shoulder and press her nose into his neck, ghost her lips across his pulse without fear of who might catch them. Scott looks down at her when she leans close, evidently taken by surprise; but he slips an arm around her waist, drawing her into his side. 

"You good?" he whispers, bending down so she can hear him.

She thinks about telling him that when he talks into the shell of her ear like that, his breath warms her skin pleasantly; or that he smells really good today, a mixture of pinewood and lemon and rosemary, that expensive cologne he only ever uses when he wants to make an effort. But he looks like he's genuinely invested in the performance, so she simply nods, and he settles back into his chair again.

For the first five minutes of the third act, she really tries. 

On stage, Manon arrives in the port of New Orleans, and Tessa thinks about her ballet teacher from when she was a little girl, how disappointed she would be to know that Tessa has barely paid attention to the first two hours of the show. Unfortunately for Tessa, she’s never had the unique distraction of watching a theatre production while Scott’s thumb rubs absentmindedly at her waist, her head tucked close enough into his side that she can hear his pulse hammering under her ear.

Turning back to Scott, she places her palm upturned on his thigh.

"Give me your hand," she whispers, and he pauses for a second before slipping his hand into hers.

She can feel his eyes on her, watching with curiosity. Briefly, she considers her options. There’d be nothing wrong with simply interlacing their hands and leaving it be. She could wait, like any sane person would, until they're back at his place—or at the very least, in a taxi. But it's dark, and they've both been so busy lately that they haven't had the energy for sex, so maybe she's just more keyed up than usual. Or maybe it's because she's still feeling a  _little_ vindictive from his fake-out on the ice. 

Whatever the reason, she doesn't think too hard about what she's doing as she guides his hand under the slit in her dress.

" _Tess_ —" he chokes, more an inhale of breath than a word, and she smiles, folding her hands together in her lap. In the darkness, she lets her head tip back against his shoulder, spreads her legs apart a little wider.

"Go on," she breathes.

Obligingly, his hand slips down between her thighs. He doesn't need to tease his fingers under the elastic of her underwear to feel how wet she is. In the same moment that his thumb rubs against her, she feels his body stiffen, his head tipping to the side to press his mouth to her hair and muffle his groan. She wishes she could see the expression on his face. 

"How much longer?" he hisses, through clenched teeth. 

The third act has only just started. Manon and her lover have yet to kill their jailer, flee into the swamps of Louisiana, and die horribly. 

"Forty-five minutes," she whispers back, and removes his hand from under her dress.

His reply is faint, head tilting away from her. " _Fuck_ me. This was a mistake."  
  


* * *

  
Much to Scott’s despair, forty-five minutes quickly becomes two and a half hours.

Marie-France and Patrice surprise them with a backstage visit to meet the cast and crew of the production. It's a lovely idea in theory, until Tessa is standing in front of the assembled company of dancers and proclaiming that the show was “riveting, I couldn’t look away for a second!”. She doesn’t know whether to feel more guilty or relieved that the lie is accepted, hook, line, and sinker.

Afterwards, there are polite conversations to be had, small talk to be exchanged with the producers and the choreographer about what she and Scott are doing now, how life has treated them since the Olympics, how they simply _must_ find an excuse to work with the National Ballet in the future. (They really must, but Tessa would rather have that conversation when she’s not visualising the many ways she and Scott could be spending the time if they weren’t stuck forging important connections for their career.)

By the time they finally slip away, it's past midnight, Marie-France and Patrice not even batting an eyelid when the two of them leave together. It’s later still when they arrive back at Scott's place, and immediately head upstairs.

Their joined hands swing loosely between them as she follows him along the corridor, her fingers curled into his, nestled warm against his palm. Her eyes adjust slowly to the darkness: no lights on, neither of them wanting to waste the time. Outside the door that leads up to the attic, he stops.

Tessa knows the usual dance, and knows it well.

Her room is upstairs, the bright little space in the attic. Her suitcases might not be there anymore, her things no longer piled neatly on the table, but she’s come to think of it as hers all the same. Hers, and theirs: the room the two of them share whenever she stays at his (which is becoming more and more frequent).

They don’t sleep in Scott’s room, don’t have sex in Scott’s room. Most days, she barely even steps inside, unless it’s to grab his kit bag from beside the door while he potters around the kitchen making coffee for the two of them, or root around in his medicine cabinet for painkillers. She doesn’t stay in his room. She passes through, the visits just brief enough to keep her at ease with the things she sees, the shapes of a life that is not for her to remember, empty bookshelves and faded lines on tabletops.

But Scott hovers with his hand on the door handle to the attic, ready to be exiled up to the furthest corner of his own house once more, and shouldn’t she at least _try_? For him, if nothing else. It’s still _his_ room.

“Wait,” she says, covering her hand with his. He looks back at her, and his eyes are big and dark in the shadows of the hallway. “Not the attic. Your room.”

He pauses for a second, and she can’t make out the expression on his face. She wonders if the memories spring to light for him just as they do for her: the first time she was in his room, and the things she found there.

“Okay,” he says. “If you’re sure.”

She nods, forthright, but there’s a curious weight that settles in the pit of her stomach as he turns to open the door across the hallway.

Scott's room is a strange place. To Tessa, the room has never really seemed to fit its occupant: far too solemn, sparsely furnished, all the colours grey and muted. Even in broad daylight, it’s as though somebody has taken a pot of monochrome paint to the entire room. In the deep of night, with the shutters closed over the windows and balcony doors, the only light that creeps in is thin slivers of moonlight, striped across the floorboards. There’s no sound—nothing but the rustle of Tessa’s dress as she follows Scott inside, the creak of the boards underneath her bare feet.

She feels like an intruder, disturbing the silence. 

Hand clasped in his, she trails behind him as he leads them both over to the bed. When he reaches out for the switch on the bedside lamp, she tugs on his hand, pulling him back.

"Leave it off.”

"I want to see you," he says, gently, turning to her, but she shakes her head: no. With steady hands, she removes his shirt and his pants, then turns to let him undo her dress. 

He kisses the top of her shoulder, his mouth soft and light. In the fragile, tentative awareness of it all, she can ground herself in that: the surety of his body anchoring her to the moment, his bare chest warm against her back. She knows what it would feel like to run her fingers across the places where his skin meets hers, to press her lips to the curve of his ribcage. When he unzips her dress and slides it down her body, his hands guide the fabric over her breasts, her stomach, her hips and thighs. She knows what that feels like, too, knows how his touch feels across every inch of her.

There's nothing she doesn't know about him, not when they're together like this. 

Scott's lips skim the ridge of her collarbone, his body curving over hers, ripples of muscle and heat. 

“Mm,” she sighs, pulling his arms around her and leaning back into his embrace. “You’re always so warm.”

His arms encircle her, palms settling against her stomach, and he buries his head into that familiar spot at the crook of her neck.

“I learned pretty early on that half my body heat was going to be stolen by a girl with very cold hands,” he says. “Had to adapt quickly or I’d have been an icicle by day three.”

“My hands are not _that_ cold,” she grumbles. “You’re just sensitive.”

Her point is dulled somewhat when he leans forwards and drags his teeth lightly across her pulse point, and she gasps, a sharp inhale of breath.

Against her skin, he makes a smug, self-satisfied little noise. “You were saying?”

There’s a response on the tip of her tongue, ready to remind him that he sulks whenever she wears gloves to skate and he can’t feel her frozen fingers clasped in his—but then he pushes his hips forwards against her, and all she can think about is the fact that can feel him there, hard against her ass. It turns her on as much as it does him, the way they react to one another.

As he sweeps her braid around to expose the line of her neck, his hips begin to move in tiny, slow thrusts against her.

“My sensitivity does not preclude yours,” she says, willing herself to remain still, refusing to rock backwards to meet him.

His fingers slip up to her collarbone, smoothing across the sting of his teeth. “ _Preclude_ ,” he repeats back to her. “That’s hot.”

"You want me to say it again?"

"Yes."

His voice is a little more breathless now, less controlled, but his fingers remain at her neck, running slowly along the tendons of muscle. Smiling, Tessa tips her head back to rest against his shoulder, reaching between her legs with a hand.

"Tough," she says, the word pitching as her fingers slip beneath her underwear, finding herself slick and easy with desire. She times her movements with his, thumbing her clit with the same gentle rhythm of his thumb at the base of her throat. It's easy to get herself off—even easier with Scott behind her, skin-to-skin, his fingers splayed across the delicate curve of her neck, his breath heavy—with the knowledge that he's watching her touch herself.

The fabric of her underwear stretches against her hand and she moans. Scott’s free hand slips up to her jaw, his thumb sliding over her parted lips.

"Let me do it," he whispers. "Please."

Without comment, she pulls her hand out from her underwear and replaces it with his. There’s a brief moment of pause, lingering as Scott lowers his fingers to her; and then he makes contact, his fingertips slick against her wetness, and he groans, muffled into her neck.

“ _Fuck_ , Tess,” he murmurs. “You’re so wet.”

She sighs quietly, letting him touch her.

When she looks down, she can see the shape of Scott's fingers outlined beneath the stark, sheer white of her underwear. It looks odd, alien—the fabric stretched out across the ridges of his hand, his knuckles pushing up against the silk. The hands on her are not her own, in a room that is not her own, in a house that is not her own.

But, with a wet, full noise, his fingers slide inside her, and her arm slips around the back of his neck, pulling him closer. Between Scott's hips, thrusting shallowly against her, and his hand, slick between her thighs, she loses herself. If his thumb wasn't in her mouth, she might moan. Instead she bites down, hard, and his hips stutter upwards against her. She can feel his cock pressed up to the cleft of her ass, so hard that she wonders how much longer he'll be able to hold out, how it isn't painful. 

The tension coils in her, twisting itself tighter with every pass of his hand. She lets the pleasure build for a moment longer, inching closer to the edge, before she pulls her head away, dropping her arm from around his neck. He stills immediately.

"Tess?"

"You can fuck me, you know," she tells him, tilting her head to look over her shoulder. "I want you to."

Gently, he slides his fingers out of her. His hand moves to her waist.

"I know," he says, pressing at her, guiding her to the bed, before he kneels by her feet, his eyes unreadable in the darkness. "Just let me take care of you first." 

The bedsprings groan under their combined weight as he leans forward, kissing his way up her leg, pushing apart her thighs. She feels like telling him to hurry up and put his tongue in her, that she’s wet and ready—has been for the past three hours, squeezing her thighs together in her theatre seat in a pointless attempt at easing the pressure, and if he really wanted to take care of her, he’d find some sense of urgency.

But he waits, his breath hot against her, taking his time. The muscles at the juncture of her thigh tremble, and he rubs his fingers across them, soothing. 

Over the top of Scott's head, she can see the closet in the corner of the room, the mirrored doors reflecting thin strips of moonlight across the floorboards. Her own reflection sits there in the square of glass, dimly, waiting. Tessa wonders if the little box is still inside: the purple velvet and the tiny, harmless ring.

She can't see Scott's face. She can only feel him, his hands hooking over the tops of her thighs, drawing her closer. 

She wonders if he was going to propose here, in this house, or if he planned to do it somewhere special. Did he and Amy have a favourite restaurant? Was he going to surprise her with an elaborate display? Did he imagine her laughter, her arms around his neck? Was he going to take her out to the ballet too, dress her up in a pretty outfit so he could peel it off her later? This was their bed. This was where she lay when he fucked her. These might even have been their sheets, twisted into Tessa's fist now. This was their place: this colourless, midnight world. 

Tessa screws her eyes closed, tries to focus on anything but the memories that are not even hers. They're a falsehood, she knows, utterly imaginary, yet stamped across her brain as hard as she tries to scrub them clean—bright, red. Her stomach twists, like there's something inside her, something sharp and steel, trying to tear its way out. She feels like she might be sick. 

"Can we stop, please?" she says, strained, controlled. "Scott, can we stop?"

Scott rocks back on his heels, his hands sliding away from her thighs. "What is it?" he says, his voice filled with concern. "What's wrong?"

She shakes her head. Her throat feels thick and closed over, like she's swallowed a mouthful of treacle. "It's nothing, I'm fine. I'm just overreacting."

But she can't look at him, can't look at the room around her—can't look at anything but her own hands, pale and silver in the moonlight, shaking. She sits apart from herself. 

"Tess? Are you okay? Should we not have... do you need me to get you anything?"

"No, no, I-" 

"I'm _okay_ ," is what she's trying to say: I'm having a minor panic attack, it's fine, it's manageable, it'll pass. Except the words lodge in her throat, awkward and angular, and all she can do is fold her hands together in her lap, clench her fingers tight to stop the trembling. The shadows are everywhere she turns: a sliver of a smile, red hair gleaming in the moonlight, the glint of a ring. Bile rises in her throat. She barely knows what she's doing here, in this big, empty house, in a life that does not belong to her.

"Water, please," she manages to get out. "Could you get me some water?"  
  
Scott fetches her a glass of water and sets it down on the bedside table, flicking on the lamp. The warm glow diffuses across the space, sends the shadows scattering to the corners. For a moment, he stands in the middle of the room, his arms hanging by his sides, staring at her like there’s something he feels like he should say, but he doesn’t know how to give voice to the words.

Then Tessa shivers, and wraps her arms around herself, and instead he crosses to the chest of drawers and pulls out a flannel shirt, holding it out to her.

"Here," he says. "Easier than trying to get that dress back on. Probably a damn sight more comfortable, too."

He gives her a hopeful little smile when she looks up at him, but there’s an edge of worry to it, his eyebrows pulling together in the way they only do when something’s upset him.

“Thanks,” she whispers, taking the shirt from him with a nod and slipping her arms through it. It’s oversized and hopelessly shapeless, and she doubts that the navy-blue and orange gingham look is doing anything for her complexion, but the flannel is soft against her skin. If she breathes deep, she can smell him on the shirt: clean and familiar and calming.

Scott turns to slip on a pair of pyjama pants, and she takes a few gulps of water, hoping it’ll do something to quell her churning stomach.

“It looks good on you,” he says, when he comes back to sit next to her. He places a hand on the bed, by her knee—not touching, just near enough to reach if she needs. “Way better than it does on me, but that’s not difficult.”

She plucks at the fabric with a thumb and forefinger, gives a weak smile. “I would ask who hated you enough to buy this, but I’m guessing Charlie and Danny probably had something to do with it.”

“Bingo,” he says, with a small laugh. “Not the best Christmas present I’ve ever received, I’ve gotta say.”

His mouth opens, like he’s about to say something else, and then thinks better of it. He seems unsure of himself, as if he doesn’t know whether she wants silence or whether he should fill the space with noise, prattle on about something inconsequential like he used to at competition, when he knew that the nerves would keep her tied up in her own head if she didn’t have something to distract her.

This situation is utterly foreign to them.

“Can we go somewhere else?” Tessa says, looking up at him, her throat clenching around the bitter taste in her mouth. “Upstairs? The attic?”

Scott’s eyes are gentle, unaccusing. “Sure, whatever you need.”  
  


* * *

  
Tessa has never been stargazing. There was never any time for such frivolities when she was younger, always busy with skating or school or dance. Stargazing usually went hand-in-hand with camping anyhow, and she swore she would never go again after her father dragged the entire family out to Lake Huron one disastrous summer.

But lying side by side with Scott on the bed in the attic, she stares up at the canopy—the blue-green sky of billowing fabric awash with a thousand pinpricks of golden light—and imagines that this is as close as she’ll ever need. She turns her head to watch them all: a network of tiny, glowing beacons, hung in handfuls from the whitewashed rafters. Scott put them up for her after the first night she spent at his. She didn’t ask him to, the same way she never asked him to replace the flowers in the vase by the window, or keep a spare set of toiletries in the closet for her to use, or lay quietly with her now, as she tries to collect her thoughts.

He just does things for her, time and time again, without ever needing validation.

Light spreads in a wash of warm, gentle radiance, casting soft rays across the bedspread, their joined hands resting between them.  

How does she even begin? Any way she tries to explain what happened downstairs sounds psychotic. “Sorry I froze when we were about to have sex; I was having visions of you fucking your fiancée instead?” She would rather throw herself out of the porthole window at the front of the attic than say those words out loud.

For the life of her, she can’t figure it out. Why does she react so strongly to the thought of someone else in Scott’s life? Why do the two of them flinch away from the topic, like scar tissue that never quite healed? The three years they spent apart weren’t fun, sure—but they weren’t catastrophic. That they’re here together, now, should be proof enough of that.

Her mother would tell her to sit down and make a list. Reasons A to Z, an itemised account of the damage they’ve done to one another and to themselves. Rank them all on a sliding scale, from the things she can quantify: the fear of hurting him again, of opening up old wounds, of twisting the knife in a little deeper when she didn’t even realise it was still there—all the way down to the things she can barely comprehend, an echoing fear of the unknown.

Because, really, she knows almost everything about Scott. She knows that he pours milk in his bowl before the cereal. She knows that he hates Thursdays the most out of every day of the week, because it was a Thursday evening the night he came home to the news that his grandpa had died. She knows that he likes to potter around the garden at five in the morning and sing tunelessly to his plants. She knows that he loves her, and that, aside from a small, confusing interlude, he always has.   
  
What she doesn't know is what happened for three whole years of his life. She doesn't know what he did the day he wouldn't come to the airport to see her off to Paris, and she doesn't know how he met Amy, or why they broke off the engagement, and she doesn't know what made him hurt so badly that he would reach out to her, across the bridge they burned down years ago.

And, she thinks, there’s a point in life—once you've grown sick of the fear and the second-guessing—where all you can do is ask.

“Tell me about her,” she says, rolling onto her side to face him. “About Amy.”

In the gentle, golden light, Scott’s eyes widen.

“I want to know. Please. Would you tell me?”

“Sure," he says, in a tone of voice like she’s presenting him with a particularly challenging crossword puzzle, rather than asking him to explain precisely why his fiancée left him. "Anything. You know I’d tell you anything, Tess. But are you sure this is going to help?”

Of course she’s not; she’s not sure of anything at all. She’s stumbling on instinct through feelings that she barely knows how to comprehend, let alone pull apart and rationalise.

“I don’t like not knowing,” she says. “It’s odd. There were years I knew everything about you, every little thought that passed through your head. I could tell people what you had for breakfast, and your evening routine as soon as you got home from the rink. It didn’t matter that nobody was going to ask, I just _knew_ all of it. All the little things that made up who you are.”

Her eyes flick down, staring at where his fingers have interlaced with hers.

“Did you know that you eat the same cereal now as when you were twelve years old? That was one of the first things I noticed the morning after I arrived in Montreal, when I opened the kitchen cupboards and there was that box of Cheerios, staring me in the face like nothing had ever changed. And you still take chamomile tea when you’re sick. But the big things are different, Scott. I could try and come up with a list of every single thing that I know about you, enough to fill a book. It wouldn’t change the fact that there are whole years of your life that I know absolutely nothing about.”

Coming out of her mouth, it sounds like little more than a magpie urge to _have_ and _keep_ and _hold_ , to stow away all the facts of his life for her own safekeeping. She wouldn't blame him for refusing to answer. In fact, she half-expects it when he turns to face her, the look in his eyes too close to pity, and she's _sure_ the next words out of his mouth will be a sympathetic denial.

But he nods.

"Alright," he says, propping an elbow up by his head. "If we’re doing this properly, guess I better get the right timeframe. February before you left, what year was that?”

It takes her a moment to register that he hasn’t turned her down, that her response doesn’t need to be a smile plastered over disappointment.

“2021,” she stammers.

He flashes her a grin. “Perfect. February 2021. A few months after retirement, if I remember right? I think it must have been, because I was in the middle of sorting out that storage locker full of our shit to decide what was going to the museums and what I was stealing for myself.”

“Wait, is  _that_ where all of our NHK trophies went?”

“I’ll never admit it, and you’ll never know, Tess. They probably make great paperweights, if somebody was gonna put them in their study. Not saying that person is me. Just putting it out there.” He chuckles to himself, and then looks across to her, his smile fading. “I would’ve asked you, y’know, made sure it was cool before I took stuff. But you leaving kinda took that option off the table.”

There’s something strange that enters his voice when he talks about her leaving. It’s not sad, not exactly. His words have an undercurrent to them, churning and low, like it would pull her down too if she’d let it.

“What happened after I told you that I was leaving?” she says. “What was it like for you?”

Scott’s mouth quirks downwards. “If I tell you everything was a-ok, and I moved on with my life like nothing had ever happened, would you believe me?”

She thinks of the look on his face the day she walked out of his apartment, the way even Marie-France, for all her polished courtesy, couldn’t summon a genuine smile when she informed Tessa that Scott wouldn’t be coming to the airport to see her off. She thinks of the phone call from Alma, three years later, his mother’s voice strained and sad.

And she thinks of her own hurt, blistering, red-raw, until the only thing she could do for it was to numb the wound with distance and time.

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t.”

“Good.”

In the silence that follows, he looks down at their joined hands, traces his thumb back and forth over the ridge of her knuckle. She recognises the movement from their therapy sessions years ago, the ones where they were encouraged to use each other as a focal point for grounding techniques.

Grounding. It’s a funny word. Like she and Scott are lightning rods for one another, directing all that self-destructive energy into something safe. They were always taught how to channel their fears through each other. What they _weren’t_ taught was how to cope when that conduit was removed, how to contain that energy alone. They weren’t taught what to do when she couldn’t soothe away her worry in the brush of her fingers at the back of his neck, and he couldn’t settle his breathing by his arms wrapped around her, following her steady inhale and exhale.

Too full of energy, discordant and clashing, unable to touch each other but needing to so _badly_ , is it any wonder that they exploded the way they did?

“It was that Saturday, wasn’t it?” he says, quietly, and Tessa is taken aback by how tired he sounds, like there’s barely strength left in him to speak. “When you told me you were going. And then you went.”

Every brush of his thumb over hers, she hopes that he’s counting out repetitions in his head, using her to reach the point where the world doesn’t seem quite so exhausting, where every word that comes out of his mouth isn’t the hardest thing he’s ever done.

“Out of all the things I’ve ever fucked up, you know that’s the one I regret the most? God knows, I’ve got plenty to go around. But refusing to come and see you off at the airport was probably the lowest point in a year of shitty low points. Too busy wallowing in self pity to even say goodbye.”

“What I did wasn’t fair to you either,” Tessa says.

“No,” he agrees. “It wasn’t. But I chose to react the way I did. And I had to live with that for every day of the next three years. You crossed the bridge, but I burned it. And I know,” he says, noticing her frown, “I know that it took both of us to mess it up. I do. But at the time, it didn’t feel like that. I blamed myself for everything.”

The movement of his thumb seems almost automatic now, self-soothing, as he pauses and considers how to phrase his next sentences. If she didn’t know him so well, she might miss the way his expression twists into something ashamed, almost afraid.

“You’ve always been… I dunno, it’s hard to explain,” he says. “Good, I guess. It’s like you were saying earlier. How, even when things got complicated, you could always go ‘well, there’s Scott, and there’s everything that I know about him, and that counts for something.’ Like a safety net, yeah? For me, it was ‘there’s Tessa, and she’s always right.’ It didn’t matter what else happened. You were good, and smart, and you would always make the right choices. But that meant that I couldn’t blame you for leaving, because then I’d have to admit that you weren’t this perfect person I’d built up in my head. I’d have to change everything I knew about you, all that stuff I thought I could rely on. It was too much.”

It makes sense to Tessa.

She was the one who spent her life trying to live up to the invisible halo he placed on her head from the moment he met her.

“Go on,” she murmurs, her voice gentle. She hopes that he hears the forgiveness there, that he understands that she knows why it had to be that way, just another thing they had to compartmentalise in the pursuit of something greater.

“It was a rough few months. I’d been through break-ups before, but this… it wasn’t even a break-up. I didn’t know what to call it. All I knew was that I’d just ended a twenty-four year relationship with one of the most important people in my life, and I was convinced it was all my fault. I was, um—”

He swallows hard, his eyes flicking away from hers, up to the ceiling. She squeezes his hand.

“I was pretty lost. I didn’t want to go home to my family. They all knew what had happened, but the thought of telling my mom in person, seeing her face… I couldn’t do it. I was too ashamed. So I couldn’t go home, and I didn’t have any kind of support network since retirement. Thank god for Marie and Patch, or I honestly don’t know what I would have done. They convinced me to come and work for them full-time. Patch told me it’d be a good distraction, if nothing else. And it was. It helped, even if being in the rink and seeing everyone… all the teams we used to train with, people with their partners, and there I was without mine…”

He clears his throat, the sound wavering slightly.

“It sucked.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“No, no, it’s fine,” he says, but the words catch in his throat, his voice thick. “Like I said, it was a bad couple of months. Probably not the best time to start coaching Natalie and Gabriel, but hey. I always say they put up with me through my lowest point, and it was all up from there.”

“Gabriel said that I should ask you about that.”

Scott glances across to her, a brief, watery smile breaking through. “He did? Did he tell you that he barely recognised me when we were introduced? He would never ‘fess up, but I knew he had _no_ clue who I was when I came over to the two of them at the rink. Nat had to break it to him, poor kid.”

“What did you do, stop shaving entirely?”

“Pretty much.”

“Wow,” she says, blinking. “That’s rough, Scott.”

“Uh-huh. I know. I lived it. Thankfully for my personal hygiene, I met Amy soon after that.”

Tessa raises her eyebrows. “Should I be worried that your self-care seems to be tied to whether or not you have a partner to scrub up for?”

A smile blossoms across Scott’s face, like it always does whenever she refers to herself as his partner, and she feels her chest tighten in a way that is entirely familiar—like she’s fifteen again, high on the rush of a schoolgirl crush. Except it’s not a silly little crush any more; it’s a force unto itself, something that she couldn’t control even if she wanted to.

“Guess you’re stuck with me for the sake of the entire rink,” he says.

“Seems that way,” she shrugs, affecting nonchalance. “If it’s for the greater good.”

She’s fully aware that she’s smiling back at him like an idiot. She’s also fully aware that she doesn’t give a fuck, because he’s sounding happy again for the first time since they started talking. But they’re not done yet.

Leaning forwards, she kisses him softly on the mouth, and then draws back just enough that she can watch his eyes widen when she asks: “How did you meet Amy?”

“Jesus, Tess,” he mumbles, in an amused tone of voice. “Ever heard of whiplash?”

“I’m being efficient. We have a lot of questions to get through.”

“Yeah, alright. You’re very good. Just please don’t start asking me about what year we lost Marina to the dark side while you’re trying to suck my dick, or something. Our relationship is weird, but it’s not _that_ kind of weird.”

Tessa wrinkles up her nose. Evidently Scott’s mind also drifts down the same disturbing rabbit hole as hers, because after a brief pause, he shakes his head, shuddering.

“Right. Okay. Amy.”

“I saw the photos of the two of you on Facebook—taken at someone’s birthday party, I think? Danny and Charlie were in the pictures too. Your mom put them up, so you must have been going back home by then.”

“Yeah, that was the first time.”

“The first time? The first time you went back home after I left, you brought a new girlfriend with you?”

Scott gives a shame-faced smile. “Yeah, my mother wasn’t impressed either. Gotta give you credit where credit is due, Tess, the rebound was brutal. But Amy was nice. She was, uh—I don’t know how much you want to hear about all this kind of stuff, so just stop me if it’s too much.”

“It’s okay,” she says, calmly. “I want to know.”

“Right." He scratches at his chin, before dropping his hand down to his side. “Okay. Well, I met Amy through a friend of a friend, a few weeks after you left. It was some birthday party for a guy I barely knew, but I figured it’d be better than moping around the house, so I went along. She was the first person I saw. Completely wiped, dancing on top of a table in the living room, but she looked like she was having a way better time than everyone else there. Eventually we got to talking, I got her number, and that was that. Messaged her a few days later and we started meeting up for drinks whenever we were both free.”

He tips his head up to the ceiling, staring up at the canopy. Tessa watches the way the light passes across his face, golden-warm, bronzed across the bridge of his nose, the hollow of his jaw. Sometimes she thinks she could spend her whole life looking at him, and never grow tired of it.

“She was really nice,” he says, softly. “I was so goddamn lonely, I would have jumped at any opportunity… but things weren’t like that with her. It wasn’t complicated. She listened when I needed to talk, and she’d fill the silence when I didn’t have anything left to say. She’d tell the craziest stories. She was an elementary school teacher, so she was used to making up shit for the kids, I think. It was such a relief to just sit there and switch my brain off for a few hours. I didn’t have to get caught up in what was happening outside of me and her, in a shitty bar in a shitty part of town.”

There’s a lump in Tessa’s throat the size of a bowling ball. It’s one thing to realise the hurt that she’s caused. It’s another to understand it, truly: to hear it in the halting sound of Scott’s voice, like he’s unsure whether he’s saying too much; to watch as his eyes flick across the canopy, back and forth. She wonders what he’s searching for, in that skyline of blue-green.

“I’m glad she was there for you,” she says.

And it’s true, despite everything. The two of them are not built to be alone. They spent too long growing side-by-side with somebody else, hard-wired to be one half of a partnership. If they can’t be there for each other, she’s grateful that there was someone else who was.

“Thanks, Tess. I’m glad too.”

He lapses into silence, staring up at the canopy with a faraway look in his eyes.

“You loved her,” she says.

It’s not a question—just a statement of fact, something that she knows to be true.

“Yeah,” he nods. “I did. Thought I was going to marry her. Thought we’d live out the rest of our lives together, me and her in the suburbs of Montreal, with my cooking and her crazy stories. I thought we’d be happy like that.”

“Then why…?”

“It was funny, actually. Amy always had these big ideas about how we were going to change our lives for the better. You remember the coffee thing? No sugars. Sometimes it was no alcohol, or eating healthier. We even did that stupid paleo diet for a few months. It seemed like simple stuff, so I’d do it because it made her happy. But she started trying to fix the way I spoke, the way I dressed. I genuinely think she was doing it to be kind. She always wanted to make us into the best versions of ourselves. I changed nearly everything about myself to be the person that she wanted. In the end, it didn’t even matter.”

“Why?” Tessa says, her brow furrowing. “What was stopping you?”

Scott makes a funny little noise: a mixture of fondness and exasperation, his eyebrows pulling together into a smile as he looks down at her.

" _You_ , Tess,” he says, squeezing her hand gently. “I could never let you go. It didn’t matter how many years went by. I never stopped loving you. In a way, I think that’s why she wanted me to change so much about myself. She knew that she could never changed the one thing that really mattered.”

“Oh,” Tessa says.

Her voice sounds tiny and small, like it doesn’t even belong to her any more.

Scott raises his eyebrows, still smiling. “Yeah. Small wonder that the engagement didn’t work out, eh? Still, I was the idiot who never saw it coming. I was planning our wedding until the day she left me. Just took all her stuff and moved out, left a note on the hall cupboard explaining everything. I tried calling, but she would never pick up. Last I heard, she’d settled down with a nice guy who sells insurance for a living. It’s a weird kind of insurance though, something to do with fish. Or maybe rivers, I never really understood.”

“Sounds nice,” Tessa mumbles, only half paying attention, her brain still picking over his earlier words.

She knew that he broke up with Amy. His mother’s phone call in the early hours of a frosty December morning was proof of that. At the time, she’d assumed that Alma was reaching out because it was the only thing she had left—that it was  _so_ bad, so awful that Scott’s mother could think to do nothing else but call the one person her son wanted to see least in the whole world.

With the snap of separation, and the years they spent apart, it had never even crossed her mind that this break-up was another one they could chalk up under her name.

Along the thin, narrative thread that underlies the past twenty-seven years—from the day she met him in the arena in his parents’ backyard to the moments that slip past with him, now, lying next to one another—she feels something new slotting into place, sealing at the ends that burned and blistered, bridging that three-year void where previously there was nothing.

If all else falls away, she knows this: he’s loved her from the moment he met her, and that has never changed.

All of a sudden, Alma’s call makes sense.

“Scott. Did you know your mom called me after you and Amy broke up?”

“What?” he says, his brow furrowing. “She did? What did she say?”

“Not much. She could barely get the words out, she sounded so upset. I’d never heard her like that before. I don’t even remember what she said, I just remember that it made me think there must have been something seriously wrong. I almost considered booking a flight back to Canada, if only to visit Alma.”

“Huh. She was the one who convinced me to email you, you know?” Scott says. “I’d been moping around for almost six months, coming back home every few weekends to hang around my childhood bedroom and tell myself that nobody would ever love me again. I guess by visit number eleven she’d had enough. Just cornered me in the kitchen and said it was high time I got over myself. If I wouldn’t email you myself, she said that she’d do it—only she’d paint a much less flattering picture of the past three years.”

"So," Tessa says, focused, careful, the wheels slowly clicking into gear as she speaks, "you’re telling me that we have your mother to thank for setting this whole year in motion?”

Scott's eyes go wide. “Well… yeah. I guess I am.”

“God, we _definitely_ owe Alma a gift basket. Does she need a new house? I could get her a house. The real estate around the outskirts of London is lovely.”

“If you buy my mom a new house, I will literally never hear the end of it. She’ll be ninety years old and still telling me that I never did as much for her as you did.”

“Perfect,” Tessa grins. “A house it is.”

“You are _not_ buying my mother a house.”

“Who are you to dictate how I’m going to spend my money? I earned that right.”

“Tessa. I am begging you. Do not buy my mother a house. Please. I haven’t given her grandkids yet, Charlie and Danny are way ahead of me on that front. Being the favourite son is all I have. ”

“Better get working on the grandkids, then.”

“I can’t _believe_ you would betray me like this. My own mother! I don’t—”

“Scott,” she says, cutting him off. “How much more obviously do I need to ask you if you want to have sex?”  
  


* * *

  
They get a little distracted after that.

To Scott’s credit, he manages to stay awake for long enough afterwards to listen to her side of the story. (“A mixed bag. Met Rose—great. Lots of disappointing sex—not so great.”) It seems absurd that one conversation should mean so much. But she feels it anyway: the tension lifting from her skin, the slow unravelling of the worry that had tied her stomach into knots for so long that it became a part of her.

It’s not an end to the discussion, by any means. There’s no putting a neat bow on mistakes that they’ve spent years figuring out how to fix. But they talk, and they share the facts of their lives apart from one another, and there’s no blame or guilt or regret. There’s only fact and circumstance. She left, he found somebody else, and now they’re together once more. The simple reassurance of that underlies everything: that no matter what transpires between them, they found each other once, and they can find each other again.

In the quiet of the attic, lights still twinkling above them, they lie side by side, bodies turned towards each other. Her borrowed flannel shirt is unbuttoned, draped loosely across her body, his hand slipped underneath the fabric to settle at her waist. Between them, his other hand rests upturned on the bed, palm to the ceiling, fingers splayed for her to trace across: which she does, running her finger around the outline of his hand, following every dip and callus.

“What if I don’t stay?” she says, hesitantly. “What if I go back to Paris? Rose expects me back at the end of the year.”

Scott shrugs his shoulders. “We’ll make it work. Whatever happens.”

When she looks up from his hand and meets his gaze, he looks back at her, earnest and straightforward. He’s not asking her to stay, she realises. He’s not asking her to tie herself down to a life in Montreal—whatever she might want for herself, whether she even knows yet.

“Really?”

He gives a huff of laughter, rubbing his thumb across the bare skin of her hip. “Yes, really. As long as you give me more than a week’s notice this time, I think I’ll be able to cope.”

She grimaces. “God, sorry. That was awful of me. Honestly. I’m sorry I did that to you. I can’t even imagine being in your position.”

“It wasn’t the greatest,” Scott nods, diplomatically. “But you must have had your reasons. Even if I _did_ spend most of the week crying on the phone to Danny.”

“Alright, I deserve the guilt trip.”

“I’m only going to hold it over your head for the next ten years,” he says, grinning as she shoots him a dirty look—and then his expression softens, his voice going quiet. “I guess there is one thing I’m still curious about, though. Given everything we’ve talked about so far.”

She raises an eyebrow at him, indicating for him to continue.

“Why did you do it? I mean, you always mentioned going to Paris, starting up your own business there. That wasn’t news to me. I knew you were going to go on and do amazing things with your life, things way bigger than a couple of piddly Olympic medals. But why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? It’s not like I would have stopped you.”

“You would,” she says, gently, and squeezes his hand when he opens his mouth to protest. “Not like that, I know you would never have told me not to go. But you didn’t have to. I think the only reason I could go through with it was because I didn’t have that knowledge hanging over my head the whole time I was with you. That when we were together, it felt normal. Like it would never end. If I told you about it… I don’t know. It would make it more real, somehow. It only seemed possible when I didn’t believe it was actually going to happen.”

“Huh,” he says, mulling over her words. “So, if I’d turned up at the airport and asked you to stay..”

“I probably would have stayed.” She gives a sad smile: a little wistful, nostalgic, the thought of what might have been. “But I knew you wouldn’t ask me to. That’s what I was banking on.”

For a moment, he looks genuinely shell-shocked, as if the knowledge has just turned the last few years of his life on its head, and Tessa begins to worry that there’s a limit to the kindness of their truth. Maybe it’s best to keep certain possibilities unspoken.

But then he lets out a breath, rolling onto his back.

“God, I’m too damn reliable,” he grumbles.

Her smile softens into something genuine, and she reaches out a hand to rest atop his chest. “It helped. I don’t regret going. I wish it had happened differently, obviously, that you’d been more prepared for it. But I think those three years are the only reason we’re here now. Sometimes it takes some time apart to realise what you have.”

Craning his head over to the side, he cocks an eyebrow at her. “Careful there, T, you’re sounding almost sentimental.”

“Am I?” she grins. “Oh, well. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

Smiling, he opens his arms for her to nestle into his chest. Her head settles against his shoulder, the rise and fall of his breathing rifling through her hair, and she winds an arm around his side, pulling him close.

Maybe she was right, that night they spent together in Pyeongchang all those years ago, when he told her that he wanted to be with her, and she turned him down for a chance at conquering the world. But she’s right now too, with the knowledge that he would move mountains to stay at her side. Whether she stays here, or whether she goes back to Paris—wherever she goes, they can make it work. She’s certain.

“So…” Scott starts, the words rumbling through his chest, low and languid. “Now that the soul-searching is all sorted, does this mean we’re making it official? ‘Cause it’s sounding pretty official.”

Tessa smiles, tilting her head up to look at him.

She’s never considered herself brave. She thinks she relies on other people too much, and she doesn’t like uncomfortable truths, and she’s never done anything classically brave like rescue a cat from a tree, or save a baby from a burning building. But when Scott smiles at her, brilliant and bright, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and an answering smile tugs at her lips—god, she feels like it. She feels like she could take on the entire world at a chance for a future together: years and years and years, stretching out in front of them without a care in the world. She wants to be unafraid of how time might change them, because no matter how they warp with the years, they will always be shapes that recognise each other.

She wants love, and to be loved, and she wants all of those things with him.

“Okay,” she says. “Yeah. Let’s do it. Officially.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever since drafting this story last summer, I've struggled with how to write the very last scene in this chapter, with the two of them in the attic. I put off writing it for months, because I couldn't figure out how to make it work. Turns out that things become a lot easier when you sit down and hash out plot details with somebody else--who would have thought? So, huge thanks go to Marcia and Marie for all their support with this chapter. More than ever before, none of this would be possible without you. 
> 
> I'm sure in a week's time, I'll come back and pick this whole chapter apart. But for now, I'm pretty happy with the end result. I hope you guys are too.


	17. Chapter 17

Tessa doesn’t think she’ll ever get tired of the luxury of waking up next to Scott on a Sunday morning.

There’s nowhere to be: no hotel room to sneak out of at the crack of dawn, no practice to attend, nothing on their to-do list in the immediate future except to lie there and keep out the winter chill. This particular Sunday morning, they’re holed up in Tessa’s riverside apartment, the remnants of last night’s attempt at making frittatas congealing on the kitchen counter next to a few empty boxes of take-out. In the bedroom, Tessa lies awake, watching the world go by outside the large windows that stretch from floor to ceiling. 

It’s a brisk sort of morning, the river birds wheeling in the current of the breeze. Across the river, the rooftops of the tower blocks are capped with snow, gleaming under the dawning sun. The river itself is empty and quiet. In the warmer months, trade ships stream up and down the river like little ants in a procession, laden with cargo. When the weather turns cold, and ice crusts across the surface of the water, everything stops. In the winter, the river belongs only to the birds, the fish that swim beneath the protection of the thick layer of ice, and the spindled, leafless trees that border the banks, branches drooping against the ice.

From her window, Tessa can see it all. With Scott sprawled out on the bed next to her, his head pillowed on her chest, and the golden light of dawn filtering in across the two of them, she can’t remember the last time she felt so completely content.

Looking down at him, she brushes her fingers over the ridge of his ear, tucking back loose strands of hair. He looks so young when he sleeps. The years wipe themselves from his face, his features smoothed and softened. He could be twenty-eight, and she could be twenty-six, and they could never have been apart. But like this, curled up together in a little pocket of calm, she’s beginning to understand that the ends are worth the means. 

It’s okay that they’re together, now, twenty years behind schedule. The people they were before could never have been as still as they are in the pale light of these winter mornings, and have been content with what they found. And that’s okay too. All of their days together, good, bad, have led them to this: something that is not perfect, but is all the more meaningful for its imperfections. 

She slides her hand down to skim across the ridge of his spine, and he stirs at her touch, yawning. 

Of all the little parts of the day that they get to share now, Tessa likes this one the best: when his eyes open, and he blinks, bleary-eyed in the morning light. Slowly, the instinctive, unconscious Scott makes way for the one who tips his head up to look at her, recognises whose body is nestled against his, whose breathing slips into time with his own—and always, there’s a moment where he looks at her like he’s seeing her for the very first time. 

On Sunday mornings, they get to fall in love with each other all over again.

“Hey,” Scott says, his voice hoarse and crackly with sleep. 

She greets him with a smile. “Morning. Sleep well?”

“Mm,” he mumbles, and the bedsheets rustle as he slips his arms around her. His arms tighten, drawing her close; she can feel the muscles of his back tense and gather under her fingertips. “You’re a good pillow. I think you can keep the job.”

“Really?” Tessa says, with a brief quirk of an eyebrow. “How generous of you. Was there much competition for the role? I feel like I should have prepared better.”

Her hand flattens across his back, wandering across the broad expanse of his skin. She likes to think that it’s her touch that wakes him, her hands that rouse every inch of him from sleep, mapping the lines of his body as he unfurls against her.

Scott grins at her. “Nah, you’re in a league of your own. In the running for promotion, actually.”

“Lucky me,” she says, dryly.

“It’s a very prestigious position. Lots of perks,” Scott says, and waggles his eyebrows in a way that makes it abundantly clear that he has never in his life held a position in a company with a HR department, because that sort of behaviour would get him fired on the spot if she was his actual employee. 

But Tessa is enjoying this brief fantasy, so she asks him: “Who are you in this scenario, then? No, wait, let me guess. You’re the happy-go-lucky kind of boss who talks about team spirit and thinks everyone likes him way more than they actually do.” 

“Nah, you think I’m cute. You ask me out for lunch, and I spend the entire evening in the tailors afterwards, picking out a tie that matches the colour of your eyes.”

“That’s until you find out I’m just using you to get ahead,” she says, raising her eyebrows. 

“Hey, we’ve all got flaws,” Scott grins, with a shrug of his shoulders. “But you do this really _neat_ thing with your tongue…”

“Uh-huh, okay.”

“I’m just saying…” 

He trails off when she gives him a look, because he knows as well as she does that they never talk much—not on Sunday mornings. 

Everything takes place in reverent peace, with the light streaming in through the windows beside them. The dawn gives grace to the smallest of movements. Scott rolls onto his back to make room for her; against the dark bedsheets, his skin seems almost to glow, warm and gold. She brushes her fingers down his chest, over the light dusting of hair that trails along his torso, and her hands are delicate-boned and steady. He slides a hand across her thigh to toy with the hemline of her pyjama shorts; the way he wraps the fabric between his thumb and forefinger is painstakingly precise, like the drape of cloth carved into a marble statue.

Truth be told, Tessa never knows quite what to expect on Sunday. Each weekend is different. Sometimes he fucks her, slow and sweet. Sometimes she wakes him with her lips around the length of him. Sometimes he slides down between her legs, and she tangles her hands in his hair, and loses herself in the slickness of his tongue and the open, wet heat of his lips against her. 

Today, her fingers slip below the waistband of his boxers to take him in hand. He’s half-hard already, stiffening with each lingering stroke, and she can tell that he won’t take long, no matter how hard he tries. 

In much the same way that Tessa sometimes chooses to feign ignorance of what Scott is angling for on the evenings when he comes up behind her at the kitchen counter and settles his hands around her hips, Scott occasionally likes to pretend that his body isn’t intrinsically built to react to her touch. It’s always in the jaw; she knows what he’s up to as soon as those muscles set into a taut line, and he tilts his head away from her, refusing to make eye contact. She can see him swallow when she slips his cock out from his boxers, his eyes fixing on a point beyond her, out of the window, as if not staring her in the face while she jerks him off will do anything to make him last longer. By the way he digs his teeth into his bottom lip when she licks a stripe across her palm and strokes her wet hand along the length of him, it’s not a very effective strategy. 

But he makes a good effort of it—until she wraps both hands around him and squeezes, and he groans: a long stuttering sound, the breath hissing through his clenched teeth on the inhale.

When it comes down to it, Scott has never _truly_ been able to deny her anything. 

He pushes his hips up into her grip, his eyes fluttering closed as her hands work along him. There’s a heady kind of power in getting him off like this, knowing that he’s entirely under her control. She could finish him in seconds: slide his boxers down and wrap her lips around him, taste him on her tongue. She could draw it out, make him beg for it. She could do anything, and his body would sing for her all the same. 

Suddenly, there's a burst of noise from beside Tessa's head: the tinny, familiar chimes of Marvin Gaye's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" filling the quiet of the apartment. She cranes her head over the bedside table, where her phone buzzes away, face-down on the wooden surface. 

“Ignore it, Tess,” Scott says, sounding more than a little conscious of her hands wrapped around him. “Let it go to voicemail.”

“It could be an emergency,” Tessa says. She’s whispering—she doesn’t know why. “It could be my mom.”

“It’s eight in the morning. On _Sunday_ morning, Tessa.”

“Exactly,” she says, and lets go of him, wiping her hand clean on his thigh. “It must be important.”

Ignoring Scott’s long-suffering sigh, she picks up her phone and presses the accept button, settling back against the headboard of the bed. The flood of noise into her ear is instantaneous.  

“Tessa? Hello? Is that you?” comes a familiar voice, in a relaxed English accent. “Wait, did you actually pick up the phone? Holy shit, this must be a miracle. I need to call you at disgusting hours on a Sunday morning more often. How’re you doing? Is everything going okay? The weather’s been crap here, but that’s Parisian winter for you. I’m taking your radio silence over these past few months to mean that you’re _much_ too busy shacking up with a certain ex-partner to call your old friend. Which is understandable, I suppose, we can’t _all_ have time for friendship in the midst of fairy-tale romance…”

Scott glances over, tilting his head in a quizzical gesture. 

“Rose,” she mouths.

He raises his eyebrows. “I’ll go get breakfast,” he mutters, swinging his legs out of bed before she can reach out to pull him back down.  

In Tessa’s ear, Rose launches into a re-telling of her latest horror story from work: something about a bolt of hideously expensive fabric, spilled coffee, and a bill with a price that Tessa would prefer not to know about. Meanwhile, Scott potters around the bedroom, piecing his outfit from last night together. His clothes are strewn around the room rather haphazardly; she tries not to laugh when he plucks a pair of pants from inside the fake plant pot by the chest of drawers, turning to her with a scandalised look like _he_ wasn’t equally responsible for the events of the evening prior. 

When he’s finally pulled together a complete set of clothes, she pulls the phone away from her ear, covering the speaker. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to stick around?” she whispers, arching one eyebrow upwards.

“Nope,” Scott says, promptly, and crosses the room in a few strides, leaning down to kiss her. Tessa makes extra certain to wrap both hands around the phone speaker. More’s the pity; his shirt wouldn’t last long if she had her hands free. His fingers cup the underside of her jaw, tilting her head up to him, his mouth slow and languid on hers, and for a moment, Tessa isn’t sure that they’re not going to pick up where they left off.

But when her teeth nip gently at his bottom lip, he pulls away, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of her mouth before he gets to his feet. “You’ll be grateful when I come back in five minutes with croissants,” he says, with a grin. “Promise.”

“Don’t think to darken my doorstep without them,” Tessa tells him. 

He lingers in the doorway to the bedroom, tipping his head back to smile at her, his eyes sweeping across the sight of her. She wonders how she must look to him. It hardly feels picture-perfect: sitting cross-legged in the same faded tank top and shorts that she’s owned since she was about nineteen years old, her hair tousled and mussed from sleep, limbs stiff and muscles aching from a week of being on the ice. But his eyes crinkle up at the corners, all soft and small, into that smile that feels as if it’s made only for her, and there it is: another Sunday morning where they fall in love with each other all over again.

Then, he’s gone. The latch chain on the front door rattles as he lets himself out, and Tessa sighs. 

“Sorry, Rose,” she says, uncovering the phone speaker. “Where was I?”

Rose gives a huff of laughter. “Nowhere with me, by the sound of it. But I appreciate the effort, Tess. I count myself lucky you haven’t slammed the phone down on me yet.”

Grimacing, Tessa readjusts herself, cradling her phone in the crook of her shoulder. "I'm sorry," she says, while she pulls the duvet up over her knees. The warmth of Scott’s body heat still lingers on the sheets; she wraps herself in it. “I’m here. Talk to me. Tell me everything.”

“Nu-uh, I want to hear about you first. How’s it all going? Are they still treating you like royalty over there?”

Tessa laughs. “Hardly. I’m old news now.”

“Bull _shit_. Your face is plastered across the entire country.”

“On six-year-old makeup adverts and luxury mattress commercials, sure. I’m _all_ over the place,” Tessa says. (That’s not strictly true—there was a TV spot a few years back for Mathieu Caron, but favours for old friends aside, her previous schedule of shoots every off-day in Toronto is long gone.)

“Alright then,” Rose says, doubtfully. “Say that I believe, for a second, that you’re not being stopped for autographs every time you step outside. How’s the job?”

“It’s going well, thanks. The kids lost their most recent competition—the Grand Prix Final, you remember the one you came to watch last year?—but we're confident they can pull through for the Olympics.”

“Actually, Tess, I think that was the one you refused to let me come to because you thought I was going to trick you and Scott into signing a marriage certificate. If I’m remembering right.”

Tessa is unable to help the laugh that bubbles out of her. 

“Yeah, _you_ go ahead and laugh!” Rose says, somewhat indignantly. “I had to sit at home flicking through the pay-to-view sports channels until I found one that aired figure skating at the prime-time slot on a Saturday evening.”

“I’m sorry,” Tessa says, breathless with laughter. “But you have to admit, that _does_ sound like something you would do.”

“What, marry the two of you without your knowing consent? Oh, absolutely. One hundred percent. I’m just mad that you knew me well enough to see it coming.”

It takes a good minute or so for Tessa to stop bursting into another bout of giggles every time she tries to take a breath. For a reason that she doesn’t quite understand, the thought tickles her. Being accidentally married to Scott wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world—in all likelihood, it may have forced them to get their act together sooner. Tessa’s helpless laughter probably has more to do with the thought of breaking the news to her mother that she and Scott would henceforth be shacked up together in unwitting holy matrimony. 

“Jeez, it wasn’t _that_ funny, Tessa,” Rose says, the sound crackling slightly as she gives an amused exhale of breath. “You really do wonders for the ego, you know that? Jaq just tells me to shut up and stop disturbing her while she’s working. _I’m_ the one paying her wages, and still, the level of disrespect… does Scott ever tell you to shut up and stop being a nuisance?”

“Nope,” Tessa says, and then, because she’s feeling a _tiny_ bit smug: “He’s happy with what I bring to the table.”

“Alriiiiiight. I’m detecting a definite honeymoon phase going on here. Is he there with you now?”

“No, he’s not. Just me and an empty bed.”

“But he _was_ there with you earlier?”

Tessa’s silence is all the confirmation that Rose needs. 

“Hah!” she exclaims, so loudly that Tessa has to pull the phone away from her ear for a second. “I _knew_ it! I fucking _knew_ it, Tessa! God, I’m proud of you. _So_ proud. I thought it would be all long, lingering looks and repressed sexuality until the day you both passed away within seconds of each other. But you really stepped up to the plate. Good on you.”

Even in the privacy of her apartment, there’s a faint blush on Tessa’s cheeks. She’s not entirely sure why; there was certainly no thought of shame or decency involved in the night she invited Scott for drinks at a bar with the sole purpose of getting him back to her hotel room afterwards.

“So…” Rose says, after a brief pause. “What’s he like? 

“Absolutely none of your business.”

“Aww, Tessa, come _on_ —”

“No. No way,” Tessa says, lips narrowing into a hard line. “That is nothing that you, or anybody else, is ever going to know.”

“You’re leaving me with no choice but to assume that it’s _really_ kinky, you know…”

“Assume away.”

They sit in silence for a minute, Tessa with one arm folded across her stomach, head turned to stare out of the window. The snow has started up again, flurrying across the river in short bursts; she watches torrents of it whip up into the air, eddied this way and that by the warring currents, like shoals of fish driven by a predator, the patterns ever-changing. She hopes Scott remembered to take a coat. 

“Coffee-related disasters aside, it seems like things are going pretty well over there,” Tessa says, as much to fill the quiet as anything else. The silence wouldn’t normally bother her, but there’s something about it that feels off, something that she can’t put a finger on. Even when she speaks, her voice is softer, more gentle, hesitant to disturb the lingering quiet on Rose’s end of the line. 

“Well, actually, that was the reason I called, as much as I adore the pleasure of your company,” Rose starts, and trails off. “We, um… we got an offer for Fashion Week, Tess.”

Tessa’s fingers clench into the fabric of her shirt, almost breaking the skin underneath. “What?”

“Yeah, that was my reaction too,” Rose says, with a strange, half-hearted laugh. “Just… dumbfounded. It’s only the Thursday afternoon slot, so not exactly star billing, but it’s a proper show. Full creative control, a catwalk, media coverage, everything. The call came through last week. I thought it was a hoax at first. But it turns out that it was those designs for the Butterfly Cabinet, the ones we spent ages re-doing after they turned down the originals. Somebody in the approval chain was so impressed, they sent the designs all the way up to the top. And, voila. Our big break.”

Tessa can feel her pulse thudding in her ears, picking up speed. 

Rose could do it by herself. Tessa knows she could. Rose probably _would_ do it by herself, too—throw caution to the wind for health and safety and sanity, and work until either she achieved the exacting standards she set for herself, or she dropped dead from exhaustion. But she shouldn’t have to. Tessa should be there with her, like she promised the day they signed their names to the lease agreement for the office. 

In her head, now, she counts back the months. Fashion Week takes place in the last week of September, and she would need to be back in Paris with sufficient time to re-familiarise herself with the process. She would need to be there to co-ordinate the sourcing of fabric, act as a second pair of eyes for Rose’s sketches, sort out the production and the lighting, sponsorship and casting and press; her calendar blocks out, weeks and weeks at a time, until she’s left with the inevitable conclusion.

To do the show justice would mean leaving barely a month after the Olympics. 

Rose must understand the weight of Tessa’s silence, because she mutters a curse, her voice rattling down the phone line. 

“I swear to God, Tess, this is why I didn’t want to tell you. Forget all the shit about deals and career opportunities. Come back because you want to, or stay because you want to. Are you listening? I don’t want to see your miserable face back here, pining for the next five years, all because you thought you owed it to me.”

“You miss my miserable face,” Tessa says, attempting a smile.

“Too right I do. But I’m not going to be the cause of it.”

Looking down, Tessa picks at the corner of her duvet, unravelling a stray thread that has come loose from the cotton weave. 

“I love you,” she says. “You know that, don’t you?”

Rose gives a short huff of breath, and Tessa imagines the slow smile spreading across her face, wry and reluctant. It’d be about two p.m. over there now, so Rose is probably sitting in her study, huddled up against the winter cold with a mug of coffee and a stack of paperwork to sort through. Her hair would be up in a bun—she hates distractions while she’s trying to work—but stray wisps of ginger hair would fall down around her face anyway, tucked back behind her ears. 

“Of course, you sap. I love you too,” Rose says. “Now forget about all of this, and go enjoy your Sunday. Just promise me you’ll tell me when you decide. And send me a photo of the snow, would you? I miss getting snow in winter.”

“I—”

Scott chooses that very moment to let himself back into the apartment with as much noise as possible: his keys jangling in the lock, his shoes banging against the hall cupboard as he kicks them off, a faint call of “Sweet Jesus, it’s cold out there!” drifting through to the bedroom.

Rose laughs. “There we go. Right on cue.”

“I’ll call you back later?”

“Don’t you dare,” Rose says, and hangs up.  

With a clattering of noise, Scott arrives in the doorway of the bedroom. His nose is red from the cold, a light dusting of snow crusting his puffer jacket and melting on the tips of his hair. A paper bag is hugged protectively against his chest, within which Tessa guesses lies the fruits of his excursion. 

“Sorry, did I interrupt?” he says, his eyes going to the phone still raised to her ear. “Are you mad?”

Tessa sets her phone down on the bedside table, shaking her head. “No, no, you’re fine.”

“Really? Because you’ve got that little crease between your eyebrows like you are, just a little bit,” he says, as he peels off his jacket and comes to sit on the bed, next to her feet. He hoists the paper bag up to his chin, adopting a hopeful smile. “Will a chocolate croissant help?”

She looks down at the bag, the mouth-watering smell of rich, buttery pastry wafting towards her, and then back at Scott. “Maybe.”

“It better, after I fought my way through a blizzard to get there. Risked life and limb to bring these back safe, I did,” he says, grinning, but he trails off when he realises that she’s not smiling with him. Placing the paper bag down in his lap, he leans back against the bed, propping his arms up behind him. Tessa can already tell that it’s coming: a conversation that she won’t want to hear, that he only starts because he knows her too well to not pick up on the things that bother her. “What did Rose want, anyway?”

“Work stuff, mainly,” Tessa says, not making eye contact. “When I’m coming back to Paris. Logistical things.”

Even with everything that has changed between them, this is something they haven’t discussed: what happens in the aftermath.

Scott nods, slowly. “Right. Yeah, of course.” He glances over to her, then back at the bag of croissants in his lap. “Do you know, then? When you’re going back? If you’re going back?”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t had time to think about it. There’s no point yet,” she says, and it’s true, they both know, from years of experience. However sure she might be of her decision, everything looks different after the dust has settled on another Olympic Games. 

“Are you—”

“Let’s not talk about that now,” she says, reaching forwards to slide her hand across the back of his neck. “Come back to bed. It’s still early. Please?”

Scott eyes her carefully. Sooner or later, she knows it’ll be time to confront this thing—but it shouldn’t be now. It doesn’t have to be now. Not this weekend, not this Sunday morning. Not when things are so good. 

“The croissants will get cold if we don’t eat them now,” he says. “Are you sure you can live with cold croissants?”

“Yes,” she says, definitively, her fingers curling under the neckline of his shirt. His skin is still cold from his trip outdoors; no matter, it won’t take her long to fix. 

Scott raises an eyebrow. “Am I hearing this right? Tessa Virtue, pâtisserie connoisseur, is abandoning fresh pastries?”

He likes to use big words in bed: that’s how she knows that there’s no ounce of truth in his words as he dangles the paper bag in front of her, like he’s actually considering turning down sex in favour of eating pastries.

“Scott,” she tells him, as she undoes the top button of his jeans with one hand. “You have two options here. You can go and eat your croissants in the kitchen, alone, while I take care of business. Or you can stop talking, and join me here.” Her hand slips under his waistband. “I trust you’ll make the right decision.”

Scott doesn’t complain any more. The paper bag finds a comfortable home on the floor beside their bed, blissfully forgotten, and finally, they return to a Sunday morning like any other. 

 

* * *

 

Christmas Day has always been a mixed bag for Tessa.

Before, when she and Scott were competing, it always came right in the middle of their busiest training period: the few weeks after the Grand Prix Final (which they would invariably lose) and before Nationals, where they would debut rehauled programs in the hope of redemption by the end of the season. There was rarely time to go home to celebrate with family. She and Scott never celebrated together either—unless one can count the swapping of terribly-wrapped dollar-store gifts as a celebration (the worst gift she ever received from him was a pair of rainbow nail clippers, which he claimed were “multi-purpose”).

They would train, just like any other day. At the very end, there would be a concession to the holiday with a terrible mashup of whatever free dance they were competing that season, and the first Christmas carol that Tessa could pull up on her phone. Afterwards, she would go back to her empty apartment, try not to cry while she called her family, and cry alone for about an hour afterwards.  

On the morning of December 25th 2025, Tessa comes to realise that things are very different with Natalie and Gabriel around. 

No sooner has she stepped into the reception of the sports centre, than Natalie ambushes her to jam a pair of reindeer antlers onto her head. 

“Merry Christmas, Tessa!” Natalie yells, as Tessa blinks, slightly stunned by the force of the greeting given that it’s barely eight in the morning. “Scott said that I shouldn’t get you anything, but I thought a bit of festive cheer for everyone would help brighten up the place, since we  _have_ to be working on Christmas.”

“Oh, um—thanks, Natalie.” Tessa puts a hand up to her head, straightening the antlers. She looks across at the younger girl, noting the bright red Santa hat placed at a jaunty angle over her ponytail. “What did everyone else get?”

Natalie gives her a mischievous look, her bright blue eyes lit up. “Oh, I won’t ruin that surprise,” she says, sliding her arm through Tessa’s and guiding her down the hallway. “It’s way more fun if you see for yourself.”

As they push through the red double doors that lead to the rink, Tessa is greeted by a familiar blast of cold air, raising goosebumps across her skin despite her layers. The ice is mostly empty, a few teams milling around at the far end, looking vaguely sorry to be working on Christmas Day. And then there’s Gabriel and Scott.  

One of them is somewhat keeping with the theme, a pair of green elf ears poking out above his mop of blonde hair. The other is a monstrosity. Scott’s hat is not so much a “hat”, more than it is a collection of Christmas decorations that have been carefully arranged into the appearance of a hat. Plastic icicles stick out at remarkable angles amid clusters of festively coloured baubles and tiny silver snowflakes, all sprinkled with generous lashings of glitter. There’s even a string of lights wrapped around the pile, cycling through a rainbow of twinkling colours. The whole thing looks like a health and safety nightmare waiting to happen. 

“Did _you_ make that?” Tessa says, turning to Natalie. She can’t decide whether she’s horrified or impressed. Maybe a little bit of both. 

Natalie nods, her chin lifting proudly. “Yup! My finest creation yet, it took me the whole evening. Do you like it? You don’t have to say yes, I know the greatest works of art are often tragically underappreciated in their time.”

Tessa studies the hat for a moment longer, watching the way it leans precariously to one side every time Scott so much as turns his head. She can only imagine how much it weighs; their old chiropractor would weep at the sight.  

“I like it,” she decides. “A definite improvement on the original.”

Natalie smiles wide. “Perfect! I knew you would agree. I thought at first that you were difficult to get a handle on, you know? But I think I’ve got you figured out now.”

“Oh?” Tessa says, raising her eyebrows. 

“Whatever it is, if it involves any kind of excuse to make fun of Scott, it’s right up your alley.”

It’s hard to disagree there, but Tessa still feels like she should protest, because _technically_ what Natalie is describing does not sound like a very functional relationship. “Well, there’s a little more nuance to it than that…” 

Natalie gives her a look like she’s just grown a second head. “Tessa, you give him shit, like, every single moment of his existence. He _eats_ it up. If you ask me, it’s the weirdest way of flirting that I’ve ever seen, but hey, I don’t judge. Whatever floats your collective boat.”

“We’re not—” Tessa tries, half-heartedly. She was fully gearing up to have this conversation with Natalie and Gabriel at _some_ point in the future, but wasn’t exactly prepared to be ambushed with it on Christmas Day, with a pair of reindeer antlers on her head. “I mean, that’s not exactly—”

Natalie raises a hand, splaying out five fingers. “One. You arrive in the same car to work on Monday mornings. Two. For someone so great at applying eyeliner, you are really, _really_ terrible at covering Scott’s hickeys. Three. Don’t tell him I told you, but Patch gets this weird little smile on his face when he’s talking about the two of you now. You should probably talk to him about it, it’s pretty obvious.”

“Why would Patch…?”

“Listen, don’t shoot the messenger,” Natalie continues, folding down another finger. “Four. Scott’s hair is way better than it used to be. Five. Not to be gross, but sometimes I catch you staring at him, or vice versa, and it’s physically uncomfortable to be in the same room as the two of you.”

All five fingers folded down into her palm, Natalie shrugs. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck… it’s a normal relationship between two consenting adults. It’s cool, Tessa. As long as you’re not dedicating human sacrifices to each other, it really doesn’t matter to me what you guys get up to.” But then she pauses, and a small smile spreads across her face—one that Tessa suspects may look very similar to what Patrice is being accused of. “It’s pretty sweet to see you happy, though. You and Scott. You deserve it.”

In the absence of knowing what else to do with herself, Tessa shakes her head. There’s a funny mixture of disbelief and relief running through her, settling her nerves at the same time as it releases all the tension she’s held in her body, everything caught up and turned around.

“We would never have been friends if we were the same age, Nat,” she says. “You are much too cool for me.”

Natalie gives her a pat on the arm, with a look like she’s explaining something very simple to a small child. “It only took you two years to work that out.” 

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day passes much the same as any other. Natalie and Gabriel get to work, Tessa helps tighten up some of the new choreography they’re adding for Nationals, and Scott’s hat slowly falls apart atop his head. By the time they head out to the parking lot at the end of the day, Tessa has collected three baubles (one in pieces after Gabriel put his skate through it), a handful of glittery snowflakes, and a sorry-looking string of lights, flickering haphazardly and changing colours so often that Tessa worries they might induce an epileptic fit. She offers her collection up to Scott when they’re standing outside the entrance to Gadbois, lingering, neither wanting to call an end to the day.

In the chill winter air, their breath puffs out in clouds. The sky is dark and grey, the sun long slipped below the horizon. Across from the parking lot, the apartment buildings that line the residential roads behind the sports centre are recognisable only as neat squares of amber light, some breaking as figures pass across them, others blinking out as the inhabitants turn in for the night: a recurring pattern of window upon window, layer upon layer, life upon life. She and Scott stand opposite one another. Snow falls in gentle drifts around them, as it has all day—piling up at the sides of the road, speckling Tessa’s hair. 

“I thought you might want these back,” she says, turning out the pockets of her jacket to ensure she’s handed over the entire collection. “You could recycle them for next year—except that bauble, I think it might be beyond saving.”

“Hey, look at you!” Scott cheers, accepting the contents into his cupped hands. “Always so resourceful. What would I do without you to keep me on the straight and narrow, eh?”

“Probably incur the wrath of Marie when she arrives tomorrow to find Christmas decorations littering the rink.”

“Yeah, that does sound pretty likely,” he nods, and gestures to the top of her head. “I notice your reindeer ears have magically disappeared. Someone get bored of Christmas?”

“ _Actually_ ,” she says, raising her eyebrows, “Gabriel stole them for his collection while I was helping Nat. It seemed the least I could do to let him keep them, after vetoing the elf ears for competition.”

Scott grins. “You’re a soft touch.”

“Occasionally.”

He pulls the rucksack down from his shoulder and slides his recovered hat pieces inside; the zip sticks slightly in the cold, but he tugs it back up and returns the bag to his back. 

“Did you call your family today?” she says.

“Not yet. You call yours?”

“No.”

“Shameful. We’re terrible kids, the both of us. And your mom was _finally_ coming around on me, too.”

She huffs a laugh, her breath puffing out in a small cloud of warm air. “What gave you that impression? Just because she doesn’t send you passive aggressive birthday cards any more doesn’t mean that she’s forgiven you.” 

“I’m putting that energy out there in the world, T. Law of positive attraction, and all that.”

“Please, go ahead. I’d love to see you explain to Kate how _believing_ that she likes you will one day manifest into her actually liking you. I’m sure that would convince her to take the dartboard with your face on it down from the garage.”

“Come on, she doesn’t hate me _that_ much.”

“No,” Tessa says, with a slow nod. “You’re right. The dartboard doesn’t hang up in the garage, it only comes out on special occasions.”

Scott rolls his eyes, knocking his shoulder gently against hers, but there’s a grin on his face, bright and sharp in the winter air. “Give it time. The Moir charm never fails.”

“You sound very sure about that.”

“It worked once, didn’t it?” he says—and she can’t fault him there. He leans in close, enough that she can see the tiny motes of snow collecting on his eyelashes, melting on the bow of his lips as his smile curves upwards. “You want a kiss? For Christmas?”

She turns her head quickly, takes stock of the empty parking lot, the evening dark enough that she can barely see the entrance to Gadbois. It still feels odd to be with him like this, out in the open air where anyone could come across them. But they’re alone, and it’s late. He looks so pretty, too, with the snow in his hair.

“Go on, then,” she says, quietly, smiling, and he closes the gap.

The kiss is warm and sweet, and altogether too brief, for no sooner has she settled against him—her hands fisting into the material of his jacket, keeping him close—than he pulls away.

“You want to come back to mine?” he says. “It’s a bit late for anything fancy, but we could grab a bottle of wine, try and work out how the fireplace in the living room works without burning the whole house down. I’ve even got half a turkey in the fridge if you wanna get really official about it.”

Tessa wishes he would have just kept kissing her. “I mean… that’s a lovely idea, but it’s late, Scott. We have work tomorrow.”

Scott raises an eyebrow, smiling slightly. “Yeah, I’m aware. I have this handy little thing on my phone which tells me the date, you see—called a calendar, you might have heard of it?”

“Stop it,” Tessa says, her smile uncomfortable on her face, awkwardly angled. “I know that. It’s just—well…”

“Christmas,” he finishes for her, nodding slowly, his hands jammed into his pockets.

All the Christmases that they never spent together, because planning to spend Christmas Day with another person always seemed frighteningly official, solid and concrete and meaningful in a way that couldn’t be explained away if needs be. 

“You know what? Forget I asked,” he says, after a long pause in which neither of them look at each other. “It’s no big deal, I get it. We’re taking things slow. Just thought I’d put it out there in case, but don’t even worry. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” 

Scott has his tells: the smile that comes too quickly, and slides away even quicker; the hands hidden from view, so she can’t see the way he picks nervously at the skin around his thumb. Tessa is sure she has plenty of her own, ones that Scott is picking up on now, that tell him there’s nothing about this conversation that she can be sure of, that her heart is drumming against her ribcage just as fast as his own.

“Night, Tess,” he says, with a brief wave of his hand, and turns to leave. His boots crunch in the snow as he walks away. Tessa watches him, his silhouette retreating into the darkness.

There’s a simple, straightforward kind of security that comes with tradition. Disparate sections of her life are colliding—the new with the old, things she thought she knew with things that she never even realised. When the ground shifts underneath her feet, it’s easier to follow the familiar patterns, justify to herself that “this is the way it’s always been”. 

Left skate on before the right. Cross her laces and pull tight with the right hand, knot off the end with the other. Her grandmother’s safety pin tucked into her costume (or, now, into her Team Canada jacket while she stands at the boards). Black coffee to wake her up the morning of competition, stirred twice counter-clockwise, then once clockwise. And she and Scott don’t celebrate Christmas together: they train.

These things keep them safe. But hadn’t she decided to be brave?  

“Wait,” she calls. In the darkness, Scott halts. “I’ll come back with you,” she says, hurriedly. “I’ll come back.” 

His face is in shadow when he turns to her; she hastens to catch up, her shoes skidding on the ice-covered asphalt. He puts a hand out to steady her, and she grips it tight, folding her fingers into his.

“As long as you promise not to try and start a fire,” she tells him, with a smile. “I won’t be held responsible for burning your house down.”

“Alright then,” he says, flicking snow out of her hair. “No fire. Just wine, and a microwaved turkey, and a really, _really_ soft rug.” 

As it turns out, the turkey explodes in the microwave, and they both get tipsy far too quickly on the nice wine that Scott has been saving for a special occasion, and completely forget to call anyone’s parents. They fall asleep on the sofa, squashed together in front of a rerun of Love Actually—which Scott insists is a classic, and Tessa puts up with for the sole purpose of usability as blackmail material with his brothers at some point in the future.

But, she supposes, as far as Christmases go, it’s not the worst. 

In fact, it’s the best one she’s had in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Christmas too much to not include it in every single long-form VM fic I write, sue me. 
> 
> (Alternatively, come yell at me in the usual places, either here or @virtueoso on Tumblr.)


	18. Chapter 18

In the run-up to an Olympic Games, all other aspects of normal human life cease to exist. Like a body in survival mode, conserving energy only for the most critical functions, anything extraneous is dismissed out of hand. There’s no time for Tessa to call her family. There’s no time to respond to Rose, who has resorted to weekly text reminders that she’d love to hear from Tessa soon, but understands that she may be busy (winky face). There’s certainly no time to record a more professional voicemail than the current: a half-audible apology recorded in the car on the way to the rink, which states that anyone leaving a message may not get a reply until after February 29th. 

By early January, with less than two months to go, Tessa has started to dream about the Olympics again. Some are benign, almost pleasant—dreams that are more like memories, of her and Scott on the podium, or the team in Canada House. One time, she dreams of Chiddy running laps around the Athletes’ Village in Vancouver, stark naked at two in the morning with nothing but a pizza box for his dignity, and has to double-check with Scott when she wakes up that there wasn’t some elaborate hazing ritual that she missed entirely.

But it’s the nightmares that are the problem.

It’s both a blessing and a curse to know exactly what it’s like to be in the position that Natalie and Gabriel are in. There’s no fear they could confess to her that hasn’t spun on repeat in her own mind. There’s no need to try to imagine that sense of dread, the tension that creeps up, until every waking thought is of those five Olympic rings on the boards, every decision exists only in how it relates to the chance at gold. She’s had plenty of chances to contend with the unique brand of terrors that the Olympics inspires, and knows them well enough to play them all out in real-time.

The first time the nightmares happen, she scares poor Scott half to death. It’s a fairly harmless nightmare by her standards—they miss the flight to Calgary, and end up having to drive for thirty-six hours cross-country to reach the venue; only, when they get there, it turns out they’ve forgotten their ID so nobody will let them into the Olympic Village. (Honestly, she thinks later, her subconscious might have considered that, accreditation or no, she and Scott are probably the two people least likely to be turned away from a Canadian Winter Olympic Games.)

Tessa doesn’t remember what happened when she woke, beyond bolting upright in bed and almost giving Scott a heart attack in the process. He later tells her that she made him talk her through the full accreditation process at half three in the morning, refusing to go back to sleep again until she was satisfied that they’d submitted all the necessary documents. 

The worst nightmares are the ones that undo everything. 

They’re the emptiness, the absence of something that she knows _should_ be there, but in her half-consciousness, she can’t remember what. She only knows that she wakes with sweat trickling down her back, heart hammering at her throat, chest tight as a vice, and the thought of going back to sleep makes her sick to her stomach.

Just once, she dreams of Moulin Rouge. 

She dreams of the crowd calling their names, the cheers echoing so loud that she can scarcely hear her own breathing as she takes to the ice, hand in hand with Scott—so instead she watches the rise and fall of his chest, deep and slow, and she matches herself to that. She dreams of the ice, smooth and crisp underneath her blades, the divot that she carves when she digs her toe pick in and settles into her opening position, arms held at her sides, gaze fixed on his. She dreams of the music: the urgent, pulsing strings cutting across the hushed silence of the arena, barely a breath drawn as they wait, and wait, and wait; and then, as the voiceover begins, they snap into motion.

They fly through the first lift, her legs tucking up around his hips. The crowd hangs on their every move; around her, Tessa is aware of the blur of motion as hands move in applause, lips part to cheer, but she doesn’t hear the noise. Scott’s eyes are locked onto hers, fire and flame, his hands skimming across her body, tugging her back to him when she slips away. One is the hunter, the other the hunted, but to tell which is which would be a hopeless endeavour. The energy builds between them, stoked by the flash of her blade as she whips her leg up into a kick, his hand wrapped around her wrist, clenched so tight that it might hurt if they weren’t both running on something beyond nerves, beyond adrenaline.

The step sequence passes without a hitch, the backflip lift too. Before she even realises, she’s folding backwards across Scott’s arm, the music softening, falling piano notes, mournful. Strong hands wrap around her waist and the back of her neck—secure and gentle, as though she’s glass in his palms, and he’s never held anything so precious in his entire life. Here is the transition: here is where she steps up onto her skates again, turns towards Scott, reaches out for him—only she can’t move. 

Her legs are dead weight beneath her. There’s nothing. No sensation, no prickle of adrenaline coursing under her skin, not even pain—just a numbness, an absence of feeling. She can’t move. And the music plays on, the beats of the choreography that they’ve worked for the past two years to achieve passing them by. The moments where the audience should break into cheers, lifting them up, vanish into a bewildering fear, reflected back in Scott’s eyes.

The illogical nature of it doesn’t occur to her: that Scott would never just stand there, frozen, with her draped uselessly across his arm. He would set her back on her feet, call over the referee, argue until they were granted a reprieve for medical attention. But in her nightmare, Scott doesn’t do any of that. He simply stares at her, his eyes wide and terrified, and she knows, deep within her—that settling, draining feeling that comes from a confirmation of her basest fear—that she’s let him down again. 

When Scott recalls that night, he talks about how she refused to say a word when she woke. She was pale as a sheet, he said, trembling like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Even after he’d wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight into his chest, it took some time before he felt her stop shaking. He doesn’t mention anything about the crying. Tessa wonders if he left it out on purpose, to make her feel better, or if he genuinely couldn’t tell, with her face turned away from his the entire time.

But after that night, she never goes to sleep without his body curled warm around hers, and his palms tucked against her stomach. It helps, she finds, whether asleep or awake, to have him there: a physical reminder of the here and now, and the fact that in whatever ways she’s failed him, it’s not been enough to break them apart thus far. She’s determined it never will.  
  


* * *

  
For the record, Tessa has never liked bus travel. 

When she pictured the way she might arrive back at Nationals for the first time since retirement, it was always in comfort and good time: a quick domestic flight, with half a glass of wine balanced on her tray table, and a taxi to greet the four of them at the airport. It didn’t have to be ostentatious—it just had to be functional, and not make her wish she was dead before she got halfway through the journey. 

What she ends up with, at six a.m. on a grey January morning, the clouds clustered overhead like balloons on a string, is a bus smelling of day-old fish and chips and looking like it’s covered more of the country than she and Scott have between them.

Patrice barely looks up when she slides reluctantly into the seat next to him. Having been abandoned by his wife (who is holding down the fort at Gadbois while the rest of them truck it across to Hamilton for Nationals), he looks to be as thrilled about the whole experience as Tessa is. His nose is stuck in the magazine open on his lap—some publication about vintage motorcycles, which would probably read like a foreign language to Tessa even if it wasn’t written in French.

As the engine starts up, the bus juddering to life beneath them, Tessa looks down at her phone: no new messages from Scott or Natalie. Good. She’s still recovering from the panic earlier that morning, when Natalie turned up with only half her luggage, and they realised that in the time it would take to drive back across the city and collect the other suitcase, she’d miss the departure time for the bus. Natalie and Scott are making their own way to Hamilton now, in Scott’s nice, quiet car with the heated seats and the cup holders. 

If Tessa didn’t know how much Scott, the strange human being that he is, would have killed to spend six hours trapped in an airless box with the rest of the Canadian team, she might accuse him of foul play; he gets to play chaperone while she’s stuck with the “team-building coach trip”. But, to be honest, they’re probably all better off for being saved Scott’s rousing, off-pitch chorus of the national anthem. She only hopes Natalie can put up with him for that long.

The bus is surprisingly quiet; most people, when she turns her head to look around at the assorted passengers, are plugged into headphones or catching up on sleep. At the back of the bus, Gabriel sits next to one of the Canadian pairs boys who trains in Montreal, the two of them talking in hushed voices, heads bent over their phone screens. There’s a steady brush of pages being turned, as Patrice flicks through his magazine. Gentle, inoffensive music plays from the speakers above, and the tyres of the bus rumble against the asphalt as they make their way out of the city, the downtown high-rises fading into the distance behind them. 

Tessa’s sigh, then, when she turns her phone over between her hands, is perhaps a little conspicuous. At any rate, it’s enough that Patrice pauses between pages of his magazine, and glances across to her. 

“It is not so far to the hotel,” he says, each word evenly spaced. “The time will pass quickly.”

Tessa runs her finger along the edge of her phone case, across the dent where Natalie dropped it on the floor of the rink cafeteria a few weeks ago. “I know. I’m not worried about that.”

The corner of Patrice’s mouth turns up into a half-smile. “Ah. Well, yes, perhaps your concerns are valid. The two of them in a confined space like that would worry me too.”

She smiles, shaking her head, and Patrice flips to the next page of his magazine.

Patrice isn’t like most other people that Tessa meets. He’s at ease with silence. Questions are not asked if the answers are not freely given; every conversation isn’t crammed with pointless noise. Tessa knows that he’s more than happy to sit and converse when advice is sought—Scott used to spend hours at the bar with Patrice on Friday nights, talking through life and skating and everything in between—but he does not push himself into spaces where he is not welcomed. 

“Patch,” she says, her voice slipping under the music playing from the overhead speakers. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” he nods. “Go ahead.”

“I was talking to Natalie a little while ago, and it came up in conversation that you might… know something. About Scott and I,” she says, and forces down the urge to switch topics as soon as Patrice’s gaze flicks up to meet hers. “ I just wanted to know, is it obvious? I only ask because we’re trying to keep things under wraps for a little while, at least until the Olympics are over, and…”

The words die in her throat as Patrice closes his magazine and slides his reading glasses from the bridge of his nose. 

In a way that she hopes is not as offensive as it might sound, Patrice has always reminded Tessa of an ancient turtle. It’s in the eyes: the way he blinks, slow and careful, like even a reflex movement takes conscious thought. She doesn’t say it, though, because Patrice is even more touchy than Marie-France about the ageing process, and his vulnerability to it. 

“You and Scott are together, then?” he says. “Congratulations.”

Tessa stares at him. “What?”

“Congratulations,” he repeats. 

“No, I mean—you didn’t know?”

Patrice tilts his head from side to side. “Well, I had my suspicions, naturally, but to know for certain? Of course not. Marie will be thrilled with the news. It may take her some time to come to terms with the fact that she was not the first to be told, however.”

A horrified kind of realisation dawns across Tessa. “But I thought you—Natalie said—”

“Natalie has a habit of seeing what she wants to see,” Patrice says, and there’s a tiny smile on his face now, one that suggests he’s caught on to the fact that she has unwittingly outed their relationship to someone who was none the wiser. But he pats her knee gently, his voice softening. “Congratulations,” he says again. “I am glad you two could finally sort things out. After the number of times Scott came to me, I was beginning to think that things would never be right between you. But this gives hope to us all, hm? That it is never too late.”

All things considered, it’s probably a good thing that Natalie isn’t on board the bus right now. The warm-up for their first practice session tomorrow morning is going to be lengthy and brutal. 

“Thanks, Patch,” Tessa says, leaning back into her seat with a heavy exhale. “I’ll send you a wedding invite in a few months.” 

“You joke, but I think the only people you would surprise is yourselves. How long has it been now? Twenty-six years?”

“Twenty-eight. And a half.”

Patrice gives a low whistle, chuckling. “And Marie was _so_ sure it would be at twenty-five.”

“What did you have us down for?” she asks, tilting her head across to him with a wry look. “Or would I rather not know?”

His smile turns slightly shame-faced. “Forty.”

Tessa laughs. “Come on, we’re not _that_ bad.”

“I disagree,” Patrice says. “I do not think anyone could have made things as complicated as you two.”

“Well,” she grins. “If you’re going to do something, you may as well be the best at it.”

They look at each other for a long moment, both smiling. 

She and Patrice have always had a curious sort of relationship: too similar to be truly close. This is how they are comfortable, sitting together on a coach, making quiet conversation. Patrice is alike to her in ways that few others are. He understands the role that she plays in her partnership: the lynchpin, focused and consistent, rebalancing the scales when Scott tips them one way or the other. 

“How did you cope?” she asks. “Once you’d gone public, once everybody knew about you and Marie. Wasn’t it scary?”

Patrice thinks for a second, then shakes his head. “It was funny. We spent so long worrying about what would happen, how people would react. There was interest at first, of course, everybody asking about our plans for the future, what it was like to be with your partner. I believe one publication even called us ‘the hottest couple in figure skating’,” he says, puffing out his chest with a grin. “That was until you and Scott arrived to knock us off the throne.”

“Never,” Tessa says, with a smile.

“Ah, I know when I am beaten. It is no matter, anyway. We made our announcement, and after a few weeks had gone by… there was nothing. The interest peaked, and then it faded, like all things do. We were almost offended,” he says, and then amends his sentence. “Well, I say ‘we’. You can imagine which of us was complaining.”

He lifts his eyes to Tessa’s, and again, she’s struck by how things simply seem to make sense when Patrice explains them to her.

“Your desire for privacy is understandable. And naturally, this information will go no further than Marie and I, but if I may… it is difficult to be fully yourself in a relationship if you are always trying to hide it away. I do not presume to know your situation. I am certain things have changed since my time—all this social media, this mess, I have no part in. Maybe you are unsure of yourselves. But you left each other after Sochi, yes? And yet you came back together, to Marie and I. Now you separate after Pyeongchang, and here you are again. You return to each other, always. There is strength in that.”

Shrugging, Patrice flips the magazine in his hands back up.

“To tell people or not is your decision,” he says. “Either way, it will not be the end of the world.” Over the top of his magazine, his eyes gleam. “Unless you would like to announce marriage. Then, I think you may have to agree to a day of national celebration.”  
  


* * *

  
She thinks over that conversation with Patrice the entire time they’re at Nationals, mulling over every word. There’s some sort of dramatic irony that she should be here, back at the competition where they took their first steps onto the world stage, while contemplating the idea of going public with their relationship. At the beginning of her and Scott’s international career, Nationals was a breath of fresh air in the middle of a packed season: a competition where the stakes were lower, the crowd was friendly, and the competitors were all on first-name terms. A little later on, it became the one competition where they could be sure the cameras would trail them everywhere—and then it was almost more stressful than the assignments in Russia or France, with the twelve-hour time differences and stadiums full of fans cheering for the opposition. 

Tessa prepares herself for the worst. It’s an Olympic year—a home Olympics, no less—and she and Scott are back at Nationals together for the first time since retirement, coaching Canada’s brightest hopes for the gold medal in ice dance. She’s had reporters follow her into the ladies’ bathroom before, shoving dictaphones in her face as she tries to wash her hands. There have been cars trailing her back to her hotel after practice, and obscenities yelled from the stands, and question after question after question, as well-meaning as they are intrusive. Battle-hardened and weary, she’s sure there’s little that could surprise her at this point. 

Except what does. Because nothing happens. 

Natalie and Gabriel are announced to deafening applause at the beginning of their warmup group, and Tessa watches as the camera on the jumbotron pans to her and Scott, stood side-by-side at the boards. She fixes a smile on her face and hopes that she doesn’t look too much like a rabbit in the headlights of an extremely large, extremely fast car. 

In the chaos after the free dance (in which Natalie and Gabriel win their third national title, breaking her and Scott’s domestic record in the process), she catches sight of a single, faded banner bearing her and Scott’s names. Scott wraps her up into a hug during the extended standing ovation as Natalie and Gabriel take the top spot on the podium, too proud to remember himself—and the world doesn’t end. If the crowd cheers a little louder when Scott takes her head between his hands and kisses the side of her face, she doesn’t notice it. Amid the thunder of the arena around them, the hollering and applause, there’s a stillness like the eye of the storm. The two of them stand alone at the boards, neither one speaking, but Scott’s hand finds hers, their fingers interlocking. 

Across the ice, two kids stand under the spotlights. Their smiles are wide and brilliant, brighter than the glare of the lights off the polished surface of the ice, brighter than the snapshot flares of cameras in the audience. They raise their hands and wave, acknowledging the crowd, and the entire arena seems to roar back as one, the smiles widening further still. 

This is their gold medal, and their national title, their success. 

Tessa has never been more happy to be an afterthought.  
  


* * *

  
By the end of the weekend, Tessa is well and truly exhausted. She doesn’t have the energy to celebrate her team’s storming victory, or the confirmation from the judging panel that the changes they made after the Grand Prix Final are exactly what they need to win the Olympics. She needs peace and quiet, and a hotel room far away from anyone. Definitely on a different floor to Natalie and Gabriel, who she passes on the way back to the hotel, weaving their way through the leafy streets of Hamilton with a ginger-haired girl in tow.

All three look pleasantly inebriated. Natalie has her arm slung around the girl, who sways from side to side, bumping shoulders with her taller friends. Tessa recognises her from previous competitions: Shelley, Natalie’s girlfriend, small and freckle-faced, with an upturned nose and close-cropped ginger hair, although the two gold medals around her neck are presumably not part of her everyday wear. Gabriel ambles along beside her, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans as per usual, but there’s an easy smile on his face, his expression slightly more focused than the two girls. He doesn’t seem the least put-out to be third-wheeling. 

Tessa doesn’t disturb them. Ducking out of the way as they pass, she turns her head to watch them go: medals clanking merrily as they traipse down the street, Gabriel steering the girls around wayward pedestrians and trash cans. The smile on her face is only a little wistful. It’s nice to be around people who remind her of the old days: the good parts, the ones that she too-often forgets. Her own days of bar crawling and attempting to keep a handle on Scott’s drunken antics are gone, but it’s reassuring to see the time-honoured traditions continue. 

Her hotel room is empty when she finally makes her way up to the fourth floor. She kicks off her shoes and flops onto the bed, not bothering to turn on the lights. There are pyjamas in her bag by the foot of the bed, not three arms’ lengths away, but she can’t bring herself to move. Her eyelids feel like lead weights, drooping further closed with every slow blink. 

There’s so much that she needs to do still, so many thoughts milling around in her brain: Rose, Paris, Scott, Patrice and their conversation on the bus, the Olympics, Natalie and Gabriel, and the hundred-and-one things they need to fix before the ticking clock runs down on their training. But she closes her eyes, and she’s tired enough that all the noise in her head simply shuts up, like a valve being closed. The stillness is a godsend. The top button of her jeans digs into her waist, but it’ll do, she supposes, and she lets herself drift off to sleep.   
  


* * *

  
She doesn’t know what time it is when she wakes. The sky is black outside the open curtains: a cold, starless night, the sparse skyline of Hamilton dotted against the horizon. She’s cold—why on Earth did she go to sleep on top of the duvet and not under it?—and she thinks she might have lost all connection to the blood flow in her legs. Keeping her jeans on to sleep was probably not the best idea. 

She wiggles a toe experimentally. 

“Sorry,” comes a whisper, from the darkness by her foot. “Did I wake you?”

Briefly, she entertains the idea that her hotel room is currently occupied by a very polite axe murderer. But said axe murderer sounds a lot like Scott, and his dark, vaguely-outlined shape moves a lot like Scott, so she’s probably safe. Ninety percent, at least. 

“Mh-hmm,” she sighs, turning her face up to the ceiling. “It’s alright, I was only napping. How come you finished so late?”

The shape makes a vague grumbling sound, and there’s a rustle of fabric, the _scrrr-tch_ of a zipper being undone. “Ugh. The committee wanted to go for drinks after the technical review, and you know how it is… gotta keep on their good side, at least until this season is done. Then it’s back to ignoring every single invitation and never leaving the hotel room. My liver needs some time in rehab.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Scott gives a small chuckle, pulling on his pyjama pants (out of _her_ suitcase, which for some reason he decided to share rather than bring his own). Just as she thinks he’s about to get into bed beside her, he pauses. 

“You’re still dressed?”

“I barely had the energy to press the elevator buttons to get up here,” she says, with a wave of her hand that is entirely pointless given that, if she can’t see Scott, it stands to reason he can’t see much of her either. “Sleep seemed like more of a priority than clothes. If you’d like to volunteer yourself for the job, be my guest.”

She’s half-joking, fully prepared to muster what little energy remains to hop off the bed and get herself changed like the grown adult that she is. But Scott has other ideas. 

“Alright, then,” he says, and moves to stand by the side of the bed, gesturing for her to shuffle his way. “C’mere.”

Taken by surprise, she lies there awkwardly for a moment or two before realising that he’s being serious. The bed creaks as she sits up, loud against the silence of their hotel room, only the ticking of the clock by the door disturbing the quiet. 

Scott’s dark shape stands in front of her. 

One hand wraps around the top of her thigh, easing her legs apart so he can set himself between them. His other hand smooths across the sheer fabric of her shirt, the sensation making her shiver—and she’s struck by how everything she wears seems to look better with his hands on it, even when all she can see is the faint outline of his body, the shift of movement where his hands slide across her. Slowly, he lifts her shirt over her head. Her bra follows, unclasped and slid down her arms; and then his fingers prise open the top button of her jeans, and she lifts her hips off the bed to help him slip the garment from her legs. 

She sits there in the darkness, her skin prickling with cold. 

It took her a long time to become comfortable with how Scott looked at her—like she hung the moon, like the whole world could burn and he would never tear his gaze from her. There was weight in that look, and pressure, too. She can’t see his eyes, but she feels it in his touch now: the way his fingers pass carefully over every inch of skin, his lips following the course, dedicating himself to the task of re-learning her. 

There’s no burden in it. Rather, it makes her weightless, giddy with possibility. 

She doesn’t need to see him. In the darkness, she knows him by sound, by his hands on her, by nothing but his breath. She would know him by a laugh, by the softness of his lips as he kissed her. For all her life, she has known him; and he, her. 

There’s no word she has for that but love.    
  


* * *

  
After, they lie in the tangle of sheets. The scent of them hangs in the air: her hair damp with sweat, pushed back from her face so she can lay her head on his chest; his body curved, entwined with hers, so tightly that Tessa thinks they might never become two people again. Scott trails his fingers across the bare skin of her back. He’s always touching her, tracing endless patterns over the curve of her body—as if he would die rather than go a day without it, as if there are things he finds in the feel of her under his fingertips that could keep him there for years.

It makes her feel powerful and vulnerable all at once, a heady, curious mix of emotions that she doesn’t quite know what to do with, so she just lies there, quiet and still, feeling the warmth of his hands pass over her.

But she’s learning that’s okay too. In the moments where it’s just the two of them, curled together, it’s not so bad to be aimless and stalling, to admit that she doesn’t know where she wants the next ten years to take her. Maybe she’ll go nowhere at all; maybe she’ll stay curled up with him, against the crook of his body, and they’ll grow old and grey without ever leaving the bed again, like those old folk tales of sleeping lovers seeking refuge in the forest, taken into the roots of a gnarled oak tree to become part of the nature that sheltered them.

Her entire life was founded upon relentless pursuit of a single goal, but there’s another pillar there too, and she finds it in the days with him: that stillness is not something to be afraid of. The quiet moments, with nothing but a breath of air between them, can be as valuable as the ones that make the history books.

And in the wake of that understanding, the truth isn’t quite so far from her grasp. 

“I talked to Rose a little while ago,” she says, carding her fingers through the hair that curls at the nape of his neck. His hair is long enough now to brush across the top of the high-necked jackets he wears to practice; she wonders if he’d pay her any mind if she asked him not to cut it. “About Paris.”

“Mm, I remember,” Scott mumbles. “Pretty hard to forget, that Sunday.”

Tessa smiles despite herself. “The croissants, or what came after?”

“Both,” he says. “Although one was way better than the other, which I _did_ warn you about. Some people just can’t be convinced, eh?”

The sound of Scott’s voice is low and languid, no tension to it, his vowels strung out in that way they only do when he’s not worried about sounding unrefined. He talks like this is just another everyday conversation, like they’re discussing plans for the weekend, or their grocery shopping, or a fond memory that makes him smile whenever he thinks of it. So Tessa’s voice does not tremble, and her hands do not shake; her muscles do not tense and tighten, preparing for the worst; and her courage does not slip away from her. 

This is what they do now: they talk.

“We’ve been offered a show in Paris Fashion Week,” she says. “That was what Rose was calling me about, to tell me the news. Full creative control, all expenses paid, media and press, casting our own models, everything. Rose says the organisers asked for us specifically. It’s a show of our very own. The first one we’ve ever had.”

There’s a brief silence. The clock by the door ticks. In the spaces between her confession and his answer, she hears all the words under the sun. Unbidden, the memories come to her of the last time she felt like this—the morning they spent in his apartment instead of the blank canvas of a hotel room, when every corner of his bedroom on the end of Rue Sainte-Marguerite was too familiar, sticking to her skin like flypaper, and the only thing she didn’t know was how to tell him she was leaving.

“Wow,” Scott says, eventually, his voice cracking slightly. “Tess, that’s huge.” He pauses. “That is huge, right?”

Her laughter is short, a little pitched. “Yes. Yeah, you could say that. An opportunity like this never comes along--not for a company like ours, still stuck in a basement by the Metro. A show in Fashion Week would be the biggest thing that’s happened since we started. If we do it right, it’s a golden ticket.”

“Stop me if I’m talking out of my ass, but you don’t sound all that thrilled.”

Tessa doesn’t reply.

She winds a hand around the back of Scott’s neck, fingers reaching down to stroke across the top of his spine, where his body curves protectively around her. With her ear to his chest, she can hear his heartbeat thudding away; it keeps a constant pace, unchanging. 

“What’re you thinking?” she says. 

“Same as I did before. That I’d miss you like hell if you went, but I’d be so proud of you anyway. That we’d find a way to make it work, whatever you decide, even if it means hopping the globe every month to see each other. I want to be in this for the long haul, Tess. Wherever you end up going, whatever you end up choosing. But I can’t make the choice for you.”

She makes a noise halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “Yeah, I had a feeling you’d say something like that.”

“What, that I’d force you to make your own decisions?” Scott says, sounding amused. “How _terrible_ of me. Is it the twenty-first century or what? Do you want me to yell at you instead? I can do that if you want.”

“Scott.”

“It was just a suggestion. It might help unlock your inner desires—you know, the ones that tell you that you’d actually really rather stay in Montreal and make use of the hot guy who occupies your bed.”

He shuts up when she tugs admonishingly on a strand of his hair, his body shaking against hers with quiet laughter. 

“I’m glad you find this so funny,” she deadpans. “My emotional labour is hysterical if nothing else.”

Still, it’s a relief to hear him say the words out loud: that reminder that he’s not asking her to tie her life down to his. Whether she wants to or not, she hasn’t got as far as figuring out yet—but in the back of her brain, always, is her mother’s voice telling her not to give up her own freedoms for the sake of someone else’s. Even Scott’s. 

“I’ve got an idea,” he says, turning his head to stare out of the window, beyond the safety of their little cocoon, blankets and warm bodies and shared breath. “I throw out a sentence, you tell me whether I’m getting warmer or colder.”

“Like…?”

“ _Like_ you think it’s kind of cute when I shred all the lids to our water bottles. Saves having to recycle the whole thing. I chew up half of it, chuck the rest in the bin. Bingo. Problem solved. You’re welcome.”

“Colder,” she tells him, promptly. “Definitely colder.”

Scott’s oral fixation is good for one thing, and one thing only. Historically, it hasn’t been kind to their selection of plastic bottles—or anything that he can get his teeth around and not choke on in the process. Sometimes living with (or around, or adjacent to, or whatever they’re calling this part of their relationship where all her things live in her house and not his, but it’s a rare occasion they spend the evening alone) Scott is a lot like living with an oversized puppy. 

“You _secretly_ think it’s cute but you’re too stubborn to admit it.”

“Frigid. Almost Arctic. Frostbite is beckoning.”

Scott rolls his eyes, pinching at her waist until she squirms and bats his hand away. “Alright, spoilsport. Warm-up round is over. You’re thinking about moving back to Paris—warmer or colder?”

“...lukewarm?”

She _is_ , technically. But she’s also been ignoring it as much as possible in favour of focusing on the slightly more all-encompassing demands of the Olympics. 

At the expectant look on his face, she sighs. 

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. There’s been so much going on, it’s just easier to let it sit in the background for a while. I know that I can’t make any kind of decision until the Olympics are done, at the very least. Everything always seems to go mad in the months before. I think I need the space after to figure out what comes next. Is that terrible to ask? To make you wait until then?”

“A hundred percent,” Scott says, without hesitation. His act lasts for all of five seconds, before his expression breaks into a grin. “Nah, I’m just messing with you. It’s fine, Tess. I’ve been there, remember? No decisions until after the Olympics. I’ll just try not to go mad in the meantime, eh?”

Smile softening, she leans forward just slightly to press her mouth to the underside of his jaw. 

“You missed,” he says, when she pulls away again, tapping two fingers to his jaw with a chuckle. “Little bit higher, you almost had it.”

“It was a strategic decision. No distractions until we’ve finished talking.”

“We’re not finished?” 

“I told Patch about us on the coach here. Which means that Marie will know too, obviously. He said that he wouldn’t tell anyone else, but I don’t think he really has to _tell_ anyone. If Natalie could figure it out, I’m sure other people can too. We haven’t exactly been trying to hide anything at Gadbois.”

“Oh,” he says, and his brow furrows. “Are you cool with that? I mean, I thought you wanted to keep things on the down low.”

“I do. I did, anyway. But now I’m not so sure.”

That reflex response is still there: to hide everything about herself from the world, retract back inside her shell at the first sign of provocation. Before, she was never sure whether she was giving too much, not giving enough, ruining her own relationships in the process of trying to make everyone else happy. In the root of her, she can feel it still—but it’s smaller, quieter, more at ease.

Reaching back to brush her hair behind her ear, she tips her head to one side. “I think I’m okay with it, if you are. Though it _is_ a little weird that Marie and Patch know before our families.”

“Honestly?” Scott says, and peers down at her for a moment, grinning—she can see his smile, faint but wide in the darkness. “I don’t care. It’s actually easier like this. Marie and Patch are basically family anyway, and they won’t tease me for the rest of my life about how it took me twenty years to make up for breaking up with you over the phone.”

“How are you always so sure about all of this?” she says, with a slightly incredulous laugh. 

His conviction has always been something she envied: that innate sense of knowing one way or the other. Scott makes decisions on a split second, trusting his instincts. She thinks over every single consequence of every single path branching off from her choice; she tosses a stone into a river, and miles downstream, she has to know how the water will ripple and change.

“Simple,” he says. “I know which people are important to me. I know whose opinions I care about. Anything else is just background noise.”

“That’s a very romantic way of saying that you have a limited attention span.”

Scott arches his eyebrows, grinning. “It’s romantic, is it? I’ll take that.”

“You’re so easily pleased.”

“Yup,” he says, popping the end of the syllable. “Pretty girl, warm bed, comfy sheets. Happy Scott.”

With a smirk, Tessa eases herself up onto her forearms, hovering a few centimetres above him. The sudden space where there was once a nice, warm body pressed against hers raises all the hairs along her skin.

“I can think of a fourth addition to the list, if you’re interested,” she tells him, in an off-hand tone of voice, and smiles as he makes room for her, shifting slightly to roll onto his back.

 Sleep is for the bus journey back. For now, they have each other. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the slight delay on this chapter. I'm trying to post bi-weekly, but this particular update was not easy to wrangle into shape. Thanks go to Marie and Marcia, as ever, for being the best editor-cheerleaders I could ask for. 
> 
> Next up: the Olympics, finally! Feel free to help me procrastinate on the next chapter by commenting either here, or over @virtueoso on Tumblr.


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